Flicks
by pinkbagels
Summary: Sam Tyler sees dead people. warning: spoilers for season 2, episode 4 and The Exorcist :P
1. Chapter 1

Summary: Sam Tyler sees dead people. (warning: spoilers for season 2, episode 4 and The Exorcist :P)

FLICKS—chapter one

"Do you think you'll get scared?"

The cinema was packed to full capacity, a rarity that Sam hadn't experienced since he was a kid going to see The Empire Strikes Back. His Aunt Helen had taken him, and he'd strained to see over a large-haired woman in her thirties, hairspray molecules mingling with his popcorn. That was possibly the last time he'd truly felt the magic of a movie theatre, the quiet hush that overcame the audience as the thick, red velvet curtains opened in complex layers, revealing the massive window into another world beneath.

"Blimey, it's crowded. I wouldn't have thought so, what with it being the day after Christmas and all." Annie precariously balanced her tub of popcorn on her arm, her steps wobbly as the theatre porter shone his flashlight ahead of them, guiding them to an empty set of seats. Sam was behind her, brandishing a couple of cups of flat, sickly sweet soda, stray popcorn kernels getting stuck in the ridges on the soles of his shoes. He tried to kick them off, but only succeeded in shaking loose a bit of soda which now dribbled down the side of the cup. He could feel the corn kernel properly wedged, like a piece of glass or a stubborn pebble, and it made his steps uncomfortable, if not downright slippery on the painted concrete floor beneath them.

Annie had settled comfortably in a seat near the middle, and Sam sat beside her. There was a mutual exchange of soda, popcorn and shy smiles all around.

"Funny, them playing a film like this just the day after Christmas, don't you think? It's hardly uplifting. Considering the subject matter, I wouldn't half wonder why people would get upset."

Sam shrugged at Annie's observation. "We didn't have to come and see it," he said.

"Oh no, Sam, we had to! We simply had to!" Her eyes were dancing in the half light of the theatre, an animation within them that belied the intense intelligence that always hovered just on the surface of her person like a layer of soft, pink lipstick. "The papers have had a right time with it, and all my friends have been talking of it. I'd feel a right fool if I didn't get in some framework for my own opinions."

"Controversy has always been a good hook," Sam said.

"I don't know about being controversial. I just want a good scare, is all." Annie eagerly shivered in her seat. "I love a good adrenaline rush. Scary movies are like a roller coaster, only you can enjoy them better on cold, rainy days."

Sam took a sip of his flat soda, enjoying the proximity of his arm against Annie's, her warmth and eager expectation infectious. He fought the urge to drape his arm around her shoulders, knowing he had to drive the thought that they were out on a date from his mind. Annie's arm pulled away from his as she checked her watch, and Sam's ease began to whittle away. Annie sat up in her seat at an uncomfortable angle, her head turned as she scanned the back rows of the theatre, in particular the white sliver that betrayed the entrance into the dark space.

"Where are they? The flicker is going to start in a minute."

"I'm sure they'll be here soon," Sam said, his happy mood deflated. He dug into his popcorn, its oily surface smearing his fingers, making his touch slippery.

"The big chickens. I'll bet they don't show," Annie said, and a sudden hope cheered Sam. She settled back in her seat, and Sam wondered just how foolish would it be to pretend to stretch and let his arm rest behind the back of her chair, to simply let it lie there as though it were more comfortable for him, not necessarily a sign he was making a move. He felt more than a little foolish at his trepidation, wondering just when the moment had happened that Annie's proximity reduced him to a shy, nervous kid on a first date.

Well, at least he wouldn't be getting sick on her, he thought, feeling a pang of empathy for Chris.

At the very thought of his peer, a curse sprung out into the near darkness, and hope was destroyed as the lumbering figure of Ray sauntered in, Chris trailing behind him with the entire load of popcorn, drinks, and a few candy bars somehow collected in his gangly grip. Chris overtook Ray and eagerly made his way to Sam, popcorn and soda raining from his arms and onto the seats and floor around him. He sat nervously into the seat beside Sam, his eyes already wide with terror as he stared at the heavy red curtains, clearly expecting to be mortified in more ways than he could possibly imagine.

"Hey boss," Chris said, his voice small. Scared.

Ray plunked himself easily into the seat beside Chris, a box of red licorice candies noisily shaken as he popped them ten at a time into his mouth. He still managed to eat and chew gum at the same time, a feat of digestive physics that was yet to be fully explained. He shifted his weight into the seat, forcing comfort despite the fact his suit jacket was ill-fitted, and his bright blue trousers were far too tight. His socks were bunched around his ankles, a pair of brown argyles that wanted nothing to do with the rest of his ensemble.

"Looking forward to this all week." He popped a few dozen more candies into his mouth and then leaned over to leer at Annie. "Don't you worry, love. If you gets too scared you can come and sit on your pal Ray's lap." He slapped his too tight, bright blue thigh and laughed.

"The movie ain't even started and I got the creeps," Annie retorted.

A bowl of popcorn was handed to Ray, who commenced a renewed feat of eating mastery as he chewed gum, swallowed remnants of red hot candies and proceeded to fill his face with greasy popcorn. He washed the entire mixed concoction down with a good gulp of soda, an action which released a massive belch.

"Bloody disgusting," Sam said, wincing. "How old are you, Ray, ten?"

"Just getting rid of some nervous tension," he said, hitting his heart with his fist.

The method certainly wasn't working for Chris, who didn't touch his popcorn or his drink, though they both remained perched on his thin knees, his hands firm on the cardboard. "Haven't been to the cinema in ages," Chris confessed, his voice still nervous. "Last flick I saw was White Lightning. Bloody good actor that Burt Reynolds. He's a bit of genius, him. He ought to have won an Oscar for that performance."

Sam kept his mouth firmly shut, not wanting to burst Chris's bubble of movie star worship with the fact that Reynolds was far better in the film Deliverance, a flick that would no doubt scar Chris in ways that would be both cruel and unusual to his psyche.

"How about you, Sam. What was the last flick you saw?" Annie stole a couple of his popcorn, her eyes mischievous as she tossed the fluffy white kernels into her mouth.

Sam was quiet a long moment. A measure of shame had overtaken him, and again he found himself feeling empathy for Chris, if only to beat up his own judgmental stance of good versus bad films and offer himself some token of forgiveness.

"Snakes On A Plane," he said, at last.

"Oh? Haven't heard of that one. Is it scary?"

Memories crowded in on him, and if he closed his eyes he could actually see the too close for comfort seats, his legs cramped against the back of the one in front of him, the screen a blank, unadorned silver rectangle. The air had been thick with stale vegetable oil and bubble gum. He hadn't wanted to go, but Maya had insisted on a night out, that they hadn't done anything together in too long, that their relationship was at risk, they were drifting apart. So, he'd agreed, and ended up sitting cramped and unhappily wedged behind two chavs who talked non-stop on their cell phones for the entire duration of the film, their conversation only marginally more interesting than the fact that Samuel L. Jackson was desperately trying to create a cult classic out of an obvious B-movie.

He'd had a huge fight with Maya outside the cinema when it was all over. He was accused of being a wet blanket, a bloody bore.

"Worst two hours of my life," he said, truthful.

/

The crowd in the cinema had settled in, a gentle quiet overcoming the theatre as people stared at the screen, transported into a world of someone else's making, a nightmare which they could voyeuristically enjoy. Sam tested the greasy popcorn as he took a few kernels, and felt a queasy understanding meet his gut. His gall bladder was not enjoying the 'butter topping', in fact it seemed to be grinding in protest at the very scent of the suspicious oily residue. He gingerly placed the popcorn tub on the floor near his feet, and pushed it with his heel beneath his chair. There, one medical emergency possibly averted.

It was during one of the opening scenes, where the priest took a tumble down a flight of Mesopotamian stairs, when the grumbling began behind him. A couple of exclamations of 'Arsehole!' and 'Ach, me foot!' disturbed the brewing suspense on screen, and several heads turned towards Sam, who could feel the red capillaries of embarrassment creep along his neck and up towards his cheeks. An elbow painfully met the back of his skull, and he whipped around, shamed fury wanting him to lash out and give Gene a good jab in the kidneys for his oafish entrance. Gene's popcorn rained down on Sam's shoulders, and his very large soda dripped sugary dew onto Sam's scalp.

"Sit the bloody well down!"

"Bloody rude bastard!"

"Hey, shut your gob you zit-faced little shite! I'm moving in here, so if you can't see go and get your Mum to bring in a phone book to sit on! Snotty little pisser..."

"Piss off!"

Popcorn rained in a torrent on Sam and Annie as a scuffle ensued behind them, one which quickly grew from two people into several. Gene's soda spilled over Sam's shoulder, drenching him in sugar water.

"Come on!" Sam loudly protested.

A bright light suddenly illuminated Gene's face, and he blinked into it, a hand held up to blot it out. Behind the flashlight, a young but stern theatre porter remained unmoved by Gene's ire.

"Get in your damned seat and shut up. Have some respect for the rest of the goers, or you're getting the kick."

Gene reluctantly let the fight go, but not without a cheap shot at the young man sitting behind him. He sank into his seat noisily, what was left of his popcorn grabbed into a fist that was in turn ferociously attacked by his big mouth. He gave Sam a smart backhand to the back of his head. "Here. See that smart little bastard, getting all high and mighty on company procedures. The whole world is turning into you. This is a bloody horror."

"Good to see you've made it, Guv," Annie whispered up to Gene.

"What, and miss the gates of Hell open up the minute this piece of shit's over? Not for the bloody world, love. I can't wait to give a good kicking to Beelzebub myself."

"Shhhh!" three blue haired ladies four rows ahead hissed back at him. Gene gave them the finger. They turned around to face the screen, disgusted. One of the grannies mumbled 'cocksucker'.

"Ironic, that," Sam said, under his breath. He tried to wipe the remnants of the pop from his leather jacket, which was now decidedly sticky.

Gene leaned close to Sam's ear, perhaps wary of that SS theatre porter coming back to send him marching.

"What is?" he asked Sam.

"You know who Beelzebub is, but you couldn't remember Jesus."

"Who?"

"Mr. Camel-through-the-needle."

"Oh, yeah. Moses." Gene shoved another noisy handful of popcorn into his mouth.

"Jesus," Sam insisted.

Annie punched Sam painfully on the shoulder. "Quit the cursing, won't you, this here's a Catholic flick! The crowd will properly riot if you don't mind your language!"

"Just got out of mass an hour ago myself," Chris added on the other side of him. "Keep that talk low, boss. Annie's right, they'll crucify you."

"My God," Sam said, pinching the headache brewing nastily between his brow.

"What's He got to do with anything?" Gene asked, utterly confused.

/

Sam was fighting to stay awake, the theatre a quiet womb of unbridled terror as Linda Blair puked another round of pea soup across the screen. He yawned and shifted in his seat, a greasy scratching sensation irritating his lower back. Some of the popcorn Gene had spilled on Sam had made their way down the back of his shirt, and now lay crushed like stiff Styrofoam against his back. He sighed, and chanced a glance at Chris beside him, who was stock still, his face a decidedly ghastly pallor that suggested he was ready to spew a few things himself. On the far left of him, Ray had a popcorn kernel in his hand that never quite made it to his mouth. He was frozen in terror, his eyes so wide they looked about ready to burst.

For Sam, The Exorcist, like all horror movies and their progeny, held very little by way of a thrill. His own preferences in film making veered toward documentaries, usually true crime police procedurals and the odd political investigation. Linda Blair's head spun around, and a shocked gasp erupted over the entirety of the theatre. Sam felt bored and underwhelmed. He'd seen worse on the telly when he watched CSI or old X-Files reruns. A child possessed by an evil demon felt naïve to Sam, a glossing over of what he had long known to be true. It was human beings who had the worst capacity for evil, and with very little help from forces beyond their control. In his working experience, the worst devils had been masters at disguising their true forms. Clean, neat, perfectly well mannered, they could easily feign concern all the while killing without guilt, without revealing even a hint of the monster laying in wait. True predators. Crocodiles in the still waters.

How easy his job would be if all of his monsters were like Pazuzu—Scabby, swearing and obvious.

He slouched in his seat, trying to shake the popcorn kernels in his shirt to a spot where they were less uncomfortable. Annie's hand found his arm, and lightly squeezed. Her warm touch sent a balm of calm throughout his discomfort, and he allowed himself to relax against it. He had to consider it again, his arm around the back of her chair. He raised his hand as if decisive, only to end up rubbing the back of his neck in further thought.

A small shadow momentarily blocked his view of Linda Blair's bloated and torn face. Sam watched the thin, tiny form find the seat in front of him, and settle down into it. Sam's arm did not find the back of Annie's seat, absorbing the comfort and joy of the season within it. Instead, he reached towards the seat in front of him, an insidious, rising instinct eating away at his boredom.

There was a little boy in the seat directly in front of him, an incongruous placement within his current setting that would have likewise been unheard of in 2006, let alone 1973. The child couldn't be more than five years old, Sam noted, and even in his own time line The Exorcist was hardly a film for preschoolers. He scanned the theatre, neck craning for a vision of the boy's parent or guardian to come panic stricken into the theatre, searching out a lost child. Perhaps he had wandered out of the Disney movie next door and a frantic mother or father was searching for their missing child in the flickering dark.

"Bloody disgusting," Gene said.

Sam rolled his eyes. "It's obvious he's just wandered in from the film next door. He's lost."

"Saying utter shit like that, little mite like her. That director ought to be shot."

The movie. Gene was talking about the movie.

"She didn't say it at all. It was a voice actress they'd hired who did," Sam said, absently. He dared to reach across to the boy in the seat in front of him. "Hey, where are your parents at? Where's your Mum?"

The little boy turned, revealing huge brown eyes and a tangled mop of thick, black hair. He held a tiny finger to his lips. "Shhh," he said.

"You shouldn't be here. This movie's for grown-ups, and I'm betting your Mum is right frantic about now, looking for you. Come on, let's go next door and see if we can find her."

The boy remained in his seat, his huge brown eyes staring blankly back at Sam, as though he were speaking a language that could never be understood.

"Piece of bloody garbage, that's what this shit is," he heard Gene grumble behind him.

"Oh damn...Oh damn..." Chris said, hands over his eyes, fingers slightly splayed so he could still see the horror that had transfixed him.

"Christ on a cracker..." Ray murmured over his frozen kernel of popcorn.

"Come on lad, we'll get your Mum," Sam repeated.

He touched the boy's shoulder, and drew his hand back when a warm, wet substance met his fingers. He puzzled over the residue he'd taken from the touch, his thumb rubbing against the pads of his fingers, smearing its sticky, thick, black substance.

Blood.

"My God," Sam said, panic rising in his voice. He grabbed the boy's shoulder more forcefully this time, his fingers drenched as they literally sank into the boy's skin.

The boy turned to look at him once more. 'His head has a funny shape,' Sam thought. 'Like half of it's just deflated, or dented. Like a stomped on soda can.'

Crack!

The boy's head sank further in on itself. His small jaw dangled against his neck, shattered from the invisible impact.

Crrr. Crrr.

Two more implosions and his teeth spilled in a blood stream from his mouth, one surprised brown eye popped wide out of the socket.

Crack!

The top of his skull split, the grey ridged lines and contours of his brain in sharp relief against his blood matted black hair. He slumped in his seat, his tiny body compacted within it. Both of Sam's hands were firm on the back of the chair, blood seeping between his fingers in thick, sticky globs not unlike pudding.

"Relax, Sam, it's only a movie," he heard Annie's concerned voice say somewhere in the distance.

She couldn't see the mess in front of him, Sam realized. No one could.

He chanced a further inspection and leaned over the back of the seat in front of him. The boy remained crumpled and bloody in the seat, a foul iron stench overcoming the air around him.

He bolted from his seat and ran out of the theatre, heedless of who he stepped on in the process. He didn't stop running until he made it outside, into the afternoon sunlight. The chill winter air stirred the blue and red garland that decorated the movie posters displayed at the main front entrance. 'Joy to the World' in bright purple cardboard lay broken in half and dangling beneath the poster for The Exorcist. He staggered to the trash can not far from it at the corner and, gripping its rim, he vomited into it.


	2. Chapter 2

FLICKS—chapter two

There are few things worse than puking one's guts out due to fear, and one of those things is puking one's guts out in front of your DCI whose name is Gene Hunt. Sam still had a grip on the rim of the trash can, and he could feel Gene's presence behind him like an ominous monolith. The stark quiet of the chill afternoon was broken by the sound of a fancy lighter clicking open and shut. Cigarette smoke tangled in the cold air, its poison drifting behind him.

"Can't rightly blame you. Bit heavy on the blood and guts, perfectly normal to be as squeamish as a little girl. You ought to have stuck to that Disney movie next door." Gene took a deep drag of his cigarette. "Mind you, quite a bit of tension in that one as well. Yeah, best you avoid that kiddie flick, might be too much for your sensitive soul. Wouldn't want to see you upchucking over the plight of Thumper."

Sam's grip on the rim of the trash can tightened. "It wasn't the movie. I've been feeling ill since this morning."

"Right, right," Gene said, clearly not believing him. "We'll get you a bit of cough syrup and a little blue blanket, then."

Just as Sam thought his predicament couldn't possibly get worse, the main door into the cinema swung open, and Annie ran outside, nearly toppling on a patch of ice as she found Sam hugging the rim of the trash can. She saw his white face, his firm grip and the unfortunate, seeping evidence of sick leaking out of the bottom of the trash bin. She covered her gaping mouth with her hand in guilty horror.

"Oh, Sam, I'm so sorry. If I'd known it would have affected you like this I wouldn't have insisted..."

That's right, Sam's gut told him, rather cruelly. You didn't pull a Chris and throw up on her, but you came damned close. You stupid twat.

"Annie, it wasn't the movie. Honestly, I've seen it already dozens of times."

"It's only been just released today," Gene reminded him. "What did you think you was watching? The Three Stooges? Nah, that wouldn't have been right. I'm sure all that 'gratuitous violence' as you say would have given you cramps."

Sam took a deep breath as he broke away from the trash can, his hands ice from gripping the cold steel. Annie's warm touch met his shoulders and he longed to melt into it, his body literally starving for human comforts. She put an understanding arm around his shoulders, an embrace that held no hesitation for her.

"Are you all right?" she asked him.

"There was a boy. Murdered."

"There was no one in the seat in front of you, Sam. You were one of the only ones in the whole theatre who didn't have to look over a puffy haired head."

"I could feel the blood on my hands, Annie."

"There weren't nothing there. You were seeing things, probably because of the movie..."

"I don't care about the stupid movie," Sam said, a bit harsher than he intended. Annie backed away from him, her warm touch and its hope disappearing.

"Maybe you should go home, Sam. You don't look at all well." She lingered at the entrance of the cinema, clearly longing to go back in and be properly terrified, her adrenaline addiction perhaps superseding Sam's distress. Gene tossed his cigarette into the street ahead of them, the lit tip leaving sparks in its wake as it hit the pavement.

"Go on in, lass, I'll take care of the princess here and run him home," Gene said to Annie. "Keep an eye on Tweedledee and Tweedledum. Bad enough one of my officers can't keep his lunch down, I don't want Chris and Ray pissing themselves and leaving stains on the seats—I'm betting that bastard porter would make us pay for the clean up." Gene was clearly annoyed, and he jangled his keys just a little too loudly as Annie made her way back into the cinema. "What is it with birds? They just love the blood and guts up there on that silver screen, no matter how much they jump and say nay. Ain't met a bird yet who honestly didn't love a good murder or two. Then they read the papers and get all terrified of the sun setting. It's bloody confusing."

"No," Sam said, confused himself. "It's because one isn't reality and the other is."

They slid into the Cortina, Gene starting the engine and peeling out of the parking space with enough force to leave tire treads behind. Sam instinctively held onto the dashboard with one hand, his stomach already warning him against this newest stressor. A conspicuous glitter met the rear view mirror and Sam could see a small, delicate looking package in the back seat of the Cortina, a huge red bow tied professionally around it. Gene's burly form periodically sent shadows over it, blocking its bright presence like a cloud overtaking the sun.

"Bloody filth," Gene said, as he turned a corner more sharply than was warranted. "They ought to shut her down, that cinema, showing garbage like that."

"It'll win a few Oscars."

"That shite? Never. Nah, I don't get it. Give me a good western, or a flick like The Godfather or Dirty Harry any day. You know, something uplifting, like."

"The Cosi Nostra and vigilantism are uplifting?"

"Something wrong with that?"

"It's worse than I thought. I think you'd be a fan of Tarantino."

"Give over. Everybody knows Italian flicks are crap."

Sam wanted to point out that every movie Gene claimed as his favourite had an Italian director, but the fact faded against a new worry that invaded Sam's consciousness as they sharply turned down another street. "Here, my flat's back that way," he said, pointing with his thumb at the back windshield.

"It's the day after bloody Christmas, I got errands to run," Gene replied. "I weren't expecting to be babysitting a little girl, so you just hang tight and wait it out while I get a few things done. And don't go spewing in my car, wind down the window and litter the road, it's what everyone else does." He driving became calmer as he turned yet another corner. "I don't get you, Tyler. You can poke and prod dead bodies with a pen and not bat an eyelash, but you can't handle Bambi getting a bit of buckshot."

"It was Bambi's father who got shot," Sam said.

Gene was suddenly quiet. His voice took on a sad, almost misty quality as a rather traumatic childhood memory overtook him. "Oh yeah. Too bad, that."

"And we weren't watching Bambi, it was The Exorcist."

"Whatever you say, Sammy Boy," Gene replied, and Sam had an instant, prophetic vision of Gene embellishing the tale of Sam and his incredibly sensitive soul being unable to handle environmentally unfriendly kiddie films.

The Cortina had found its way down a quiet, hedge lined street, the road only marginally crumbling in places. It had a wartime air about it, a stoic sensibility that was expressed in the rows of neat, crisply white curtains that hung in every window and the pristine cleanliness of the glass despite the cracks in the steps and the loose bricks that threatened to pop out, revealing the epidermis of the house beneath. Gene pulled the Cortina up in front of one home in particular, a large cavern of dormant rosebushes hiding its left side, a black oak door framed with white. A very fat black and white cat was in the window, lost in thought as it licked its paws, ignoring the appearance of two human males at its home. Gene cradled the package he had plucked from the back seat of the Cortina under his arm, and he held it gingerly, as though it were a living thing prone to injury. He reached for the doorbell, only to stop, his index finger held aloft as he turned on Sam.

"I wasn't counting on bringing you about, so unless you want your chestnuts roasting on an open fire and split like popcorn I suggest you be on your best damned behaviour. Mind your P's and Q's, say 'ta often and don't curse unless you fancy having your tongue sliced out and fried up then served with catsup. Got it?"

"In other words, don't act like you."

"Stuff the funnies, too. It ain't polite. Bloody bastard." His meaty finger was about to press the doorbell when the heavy oak door was swung open, revealing a very tiny, demure little old lady in its frame. She was so small, Sam found himself looking down at her smiling, dainty face. Her tiny mouth opened up to an unexpected width as she let out a happy exclamation of surprise. She reached up, way up, to pat Gene on the cheeks and force him to her level to give him a peck.

"Come on, come on!" she said, waving them both into the house. "Tea's just been put on, and the biscuits are about done."

Her tiny body disappeared around the corner of the front hall, and the sound of a kettle being taken off the stove could be heard where they were standing. Gene shrugged off his camel coat, making sure he shoved the gift into Sam's hands as he did so, then wrenching it from him the minute he was free. Sam sighed and tried to follow him, only to be stopped by Gene kicking his shin.

"Shoes off," Gene growled.

Sam rubbed his shin as he slid them off and placed them neatly beside Gene's patent white leather loafers. He felt a pang of triumph over the fact that his simple black dress shoes outclassed them.

"Did it arrive?" Gene shouted out, heading towards the vicinity of the kitchen. Sam tried to follow him, but the hallway suddenly ended at a set of stairs that jutted sharply to the right. In front of him were three doors, all of them shut and thus only guesswork was going to tell him which one led to the kitchen. He opted for door number two, and found himself in a small, very crowded living room area. He searched for an entrance to the kitchen in the small space but couldn't find it. He left the living room to try door number one, only to find it was a loo. The third door revealed a storage area filled with spades and dented watering cans that led into the back yard where a small dust bowl of concrete and worn flowers peeked in from behind a rusted iron screen that served as the back door. He stepped back and tried to review his options, which were definitely limited to the three doors in front of him. There was a kitchen somewhere nearby, he'd heard the kettle.

He dared to contemplate the stairs, wondering if the mad layout of the place included a kitchen where a bedroom would be when he heard Gene's mother say: "Arrived just this morning, as promised. Lovely lads, the ones what dropped it off. Fabulous service, delivering during holiday like this."

Her voice seemed to be coming from directly within the stairs, more specifically as though coming upwards from below. They couldn't possibly have put a kitchen in the basement, surely? He backed away from the stairs and opted to wait in the crowded living room behind door number two. The walls were lined with bookshelves which were full to bursting with texts, and though there was a large window at the far wall, it was completely covered with thick, woolly curtains that were once an impossible to decipher shade of brown and had now faded into a depressing grey. There were a myriad of antique furnishings of very high quality littering the small space, a clutter that made the room claustrophobic. The living room had the shabby chic of an antique market, with bits and pieces of the past invading every spare surface, and what little space was left was taken up by piles and piles of books.

In the midst of all this antiquity, a strangely congruous injection had been plunked clunkily against the wall where a sofa could have found a home. A huge, mahogany encased television squatted before him, two large brass ornaments dangling in the middle of the speakers like obscene renditions of adorned nipples. The wood had been carved into overbearing, baroque curly-cues, the cloth covering the speakers a bright orange. It was truly the most hideous piece of furniture Sam had ever seen, and it probably cost the poor devil who had bought it a small fortune.

Sam checked its side, and found a small bow stuck onto it, a little pastel blue card taped to it, a rosy cheeked snowman bidding him Happy Holidays. Sam dared to open the card and read the sentiment within:

"To: Mummy Love: Gene XXXOOO"

Gene stood in the doorway of the tiny, cramped living room, his mouth wide in a grin as he nodded at the television. "Full colour. Biggest and best of the lot." He checked over his shoulder to see if his mother had followed him from the mysteriously absent kitchen and gave Sam a hushed confession.

"Convinced a couple of cons I banged up last week to make the delivery. Said I'd shave off a couple of misdemeanors if they did me a favour." He frowned, thinking his deal over. "I hope she didn't leave those bastards no tip."

Sam read the inside of the card once again, anything to keep his eyes from meeting Gene's and betraying his sense of repulsion at his choice of furnishings.

"'Mummy'?" Sam said, barely hiding his smirk.

"Shut your gob. What are you doing in here, anyway?"

"I can't find the kitchen."

"Ah, I see. You're blind as well as stupid." Gene moved out the way of the door, revealing an opening in the center of the staircase directly behind him.

"But...That wasn't there before!"

"Right. Right. I suppose this is my fault, I should have bloody well made it clear that being on your best behaviour also meant not acting like a complete nutter." Gene smacked Sam on the side of the head when he was sure his mother wouldn't see him. "Smarten up!"

"Come on lads, tea's on!" Sam could hear the elder Mrs. Hunt shout up from what had to be the basement.

"What's your kitchen doing in the foundation?" Sam asked.

"I told you, quit the crazy talk or that fried tongue threat still stands."

Sam followed Gene into the opening beneath the main stairs, and turned sharply to the right—an impossible feat since the the staircase wall was supposed to be there. They walked down two more similar flights of stairs, always jutting out further right, until they were in a place that Sam had assumed was some strange, dungeon depth, where the tiny Mrs. Hunt served stew out of a giant cauldron. Instead, the kitchen was bright and airy and plainly on level ground with the back lot. A large set of windows spanned what had to be the entire width of the house, if not more.

"I don't understand," Sam said to himself. "It's..." He swallowed nervously as Gene gave him a warning glare. "It's much bigger on the inside."

The kitchen was not free from the barrage of books that had invaded the living room, and there were rows of shelves on the far wall, packed solid with books of which only a small percentage were about cooking. Sam took a quick glean of the titles: Heaven and Hell, Swedenborg. On Being And Nothingness. Dreams Interpreted. Edgar Cayce. On Death And Dying.

Sam smiled nervously at Mrs. Hunt, who was now finishing the tea setting with a proper brew of tea in a standard, old fashioned brown betty teapot. "You're quite the bibliophile," Sam said to her.

Gene stopped breathing behind him. Sam could swear he heard the muscles in Gene's fists creak.

"What did you just call my mother?" he snarled at Sam, his expression murderous.

"Oh yes," Mrs. Hunt replied, sweetly. "I am a lover of the printed word. Unfortunately, not too many in this house shared my enthusiasm." She gave a raised brow to Gene who reddened beneath her disciplinary scrutiny. "Gene keeps insisting I get rid of all this 'kindling', as he calls it. He has never been a boy to understand the importance of a frame of reference. I blame his father—He was more of the outdoor type, you know."

Her brow still raised, she stared at Gene expectantly, her hands primly in her lap on the surface of her lace apron. "Well?" she said to him, breaking the silence. "Are you going to just stand there, Gene, or are you going to introduce your guest?"

"Oh. Right. Sorry Mum..." Gene coughed into his fist and nodded blithely at Sam. "This here's..."

"Sam Tyler," his mother finished for him. She gave Sam a truly disarming smile. She took Sam's hand in hers, her palms cool to the touch. "You're the newest DI, the one just in from Hyde."

"Yes. I take it DCI Hunt has spoken of me to you before." Sam gave Gene a shifty eyed look that made it clear he wasn't happy about being tea table gossip in the Hunt family home.

"No, dear. Gene never talks about work." Her hand parted from his, and she brought her palm against her heart. "I'm Dierdre Hunt. Gene's mother."

"I've gathered that," Sam said, smiling with all the charm he could muster. "Mrs. Hunt...Whatever was said, I wouldn't believe a word of it."

"You can't believe a thing you haven't heard," Dierdre said, still smiling. She bid them both to sit at the table. "Come on, it's getting tepid."

She puttered about in the kitchen, arranging freshly baked biscuits on a plate. The air was thick with the mouth watering scent of a master cook, the pots and pans that hung on the rack above the stove stained black with use. This was the rustic kitchen of a good cook, Sam thought. Full of the recipes grandmothers in his own time had long since forgotten.

Gene hesitated as he settled into his seat, his watch perused with grave importance. "We really shouldn't stay, we has to get back to the station..."

A cup of tea was slammed down on the table in front of him, its force sending cutlery clanging. "You can have a cup of tea with your mother," Dierdre Hunt said, leaving no room for argument. He shrank beneath the insistence of his mother and, having been told, Gene meekly sipped at his tea.

"This is really lovely," Sam said, as he took a seat himself. Sugar and cream were set out in a dainty serving set with roses adorning the ceramic. "You've gone through such bother. It's a bit of a lost art where I'm from."

"Well, now, here's a lad with proper manners," Dierdre said as she looked on Sam with matronly approval. "Gene, don't eat with your mouth open, put that napkin in your lap, and for God's sake, it's a cup of tea not a pint at the pub, so quit the slurping. How's your tea, Sam?"

"Absolute perfection," Sam said, honestly.

"Aw, you're a lovely lad. Here, have a biscuit, you look famished." She smartly smacked Gene's hand as he reached for a second one. "Wait your turn."

"Have you tried it out, Mum? Is it working all right?"

"I really wish you'd learn to not talk and eat all at once. Nobody enjoys crumbs spit at them." Dierdre smoothed down her lace apron and joined them at the head of the table. "It'll be a bit of getting used to. I've survived this long without a television, but I suppose it's about time I caught up with the rest of the world." She smiled and patted Gene warmly on the cheek. "It's lovely, dear. I'm sure I'll find some use for it."

Gene positively blushed beneath her approval and Sam, moved to empathy for Gene's plight to please his mother, did his best to add value to his gift: "They air open university lectures. It's quite interesting sometimes."

"Educated and well mannered," Dierdre said, shaking her head in wonder as she looked on Sam. "Here, Gene, you should take a few pointers from this one. I'll bet Sam never mixes his metaphors."

Gene scowled over his tea, his happy moment ruined.

Dierdre Hunt took a box of chocolates off of her kitchen counter, a few stray crumbs from when she'd rolled out the biscuits clinging to the glittery wrapping that remained on the box's underside. This was the added gift Gene had brought with him, the red bow laying discarded on the edge of the porcelain sink. She held the exposed contents out to Sam, who noted they were especially dark chocolates. Undefined richly European, no doubt the dearest box Gene could find.

"Have one," Dierdre bid Sam.

Gene's murderous glare insisted Sam would die a horrible, slow death at the heel of Gene Hunt's foot if he so much as breathed on them.

"No, thank you," Sam said. "I haven't been feeling all that well today." He glanced around the large confines of the kitchen, at the screen door that backed onto the cement garden in the exact formation of the third door upstairs. The kitchen felt the width of the entire house, if not more, and yet the concrete garden outside remained demure, tiny. "I've been feeling a bit dizzy,"

"Oh my," Dierdre said, sympathetic. "I can't half wonder why. What you need, my dear, is a good physicist."

Sam smiled over his cup of perfectly brewed tea. "You mean a physician," he said.

"No," Dierdre replied. "I meant what I said the first time."


	3. Chapter 3

Summary: Sam Tyler sees dead people. (warning: spoilers for season 2, episode 4 and The Exorcist :P)

FLICKS—chapter three

Dierdre Hunt was a flurry of activity as she cleared up her kitchen counters of all traces of crumbs and flour, the sink deftly filled and emptied of soapy water as she took care of the dishes. Her efficiency proven, she grabbed her handbag which was sitting on the kitchen counter.

"Now what a bother," she said, as she opened her purse and searched its contents. "I've gone and run out of fags." She gave Gene an imploring look that the large man positively melted under. "Gene, dearest, could you pop round the local and see if they got any? You know the ones, Cameo menthol lights."

Gene finished wolfing down his third biscuit, his voice filtered through crumbs as he answered her. "We'll get right on it." He stood up and swallowed, then grabbed a mouthful of tea to wash it further down. "Be back in ten. Come on, Sam."

"Don't be daft!" Dierdre scolded him. "It's just a pack of ciggies, you don't need to take an army with you. Let Sam finish his tea, he can stay here and keep me company until you get back."

Clearly upset with this arrangement, Gene hesitated, his hands absently wiping crumbs off of the lapels of his suit jacket.

"I probably should get going," Sam said, and made a move to get up.

"Sit down and have another cup of tea," Dierdre insisted, in much the same tone she had given Gene earlier. "Honestly, you work together, you're on the same side. It's hardly likely Sam is about to murder me in cold blood while you go out and get me a pack of smokes." She plunked another biscuit in front of Sam, and encouraged him to slather it with mouthwatering, homemade jam. "Look at you. Skin and bone. You got nobody feeding you properly." She glared back at Gene as though somehow this apparent fact was his fault. "Cameo menthols," she repeated.

"Be back in ten, and not a moment later," Gene said, resigned to fate. He trundled up the stairs that led to the front entrance, and Dierdre listened for him, her hand on the rail. She didn't move from the spot until she heard the front door slam, evidence that Gene had left. Instantly, her stern mood brightened.

"Now that's taken care of, you and I can get better acquainted. Though I suspect this will be the first and last time—Gene's never brought anyone home from his work before, he's very strict about keeping his work at work and his home life private."

Sam sipped his glorious brew of tea, its taste and his confusing surroundings having a rather mystical, if not downright unnerving effect. "How did you know my name?" he asked her.

"The same way I know you're not really from Hyde," Dierdre said. She sat at the table, and gave Sam a rueful sigh. "I'm no fool. I gathered you were something different the minute you walked in my door. Now, you don't have that gormless Swedenborgian-space air to you, so I know you're not a wayward spirit. Nor are you a liar, which would have proven you to be a darker element. No, Sam Tyler, what you are is a man out of sync with his surroundings, which I'm sure you agree to be true."

Sam could feel his heart racing as Dierdre Hunt had him under her scrutiny, and he wondered if not going with Gene had been a good decision after all. He was possibly hallucinating, his real life coma drama was invading the confines of Gene Hunt's family home. The two states of his being were dangerously mixed within the confused construction of the house, and Dierdre Hunt had become another mechanism to drive his madness home.

"Sam, it is a normal thing for you to be here, but not to be so aware. There are so many layers, you see, but it's abnormal to see them all at once like you have."

"Mrs. Hunt..." Sam protested.

She reached behind her, pulling her purse from the counter and bringing it onto the table where they were seated. She fished around inside of its leather confines, her brow pursed in a tiny frown, her dark eyes glittering in thought. She let out a small cry of triumph as she took a small box out of her purse, and she pushed the leather handbag to one side, nearly toppling the creamer and sugar as she did so. She pushed the box towards Sam, and nodded at it.

He picked it up. A pack of cards.

"Go on," she said. "Take them out and shuffle them. And be quick about it, I don't want Gene catching me. He right hates it when I do this."

"I don't understand."

"Check the deck first. Make sure the cards are all there."

Humouring her, Sam took the well worn cards out of their box, his fingers splaying their undersides. He counted off the winking Jacks, Kings and Queens, his thumb sliding over nines, eights, tens and over and above the series of aces. He shrugged as he patted the deck back into a thick, compact rectangle. "They're all there," he said. "It's just an ordinary deck."

"Good, then this will be easy. Shuffle them and put them into three piles,"

Sam did as instructed, his feelings of foreboding beginning to ease as he understood he was simply keeping an eccentric elderly lady company. He couldn't stop the smile that crept onto his face, and he scratched at his chin as he looked on the three piles of cards in front of him. "So, are you some kind of spiritualist, then?"

"Nothing is as simple as it first appears," Dierdre Hunt warned him. "Turn up the first card."

He flipped the first card on the first deck over and took a deep breath when the large, black image of the Ace of Spades stared back at him, its outline menacing. He took a deep breath, figuring he was making far too much of this than he needed to.

"So, what does that predict for me?" he asked, smiling.

"I wouldn't know," Dierdre said. "Flip over the other two."

He turned the first card on the second deck over.

The Ace of Spades.

"Neat trick," Sam said.

"Not over yet," Dierdre warned. She pointed at the last pile, and Sam hesitated over it, his smile faltering.

"I...Mrs. Hunt, what are you...?"

"Just do it, Sam."

He flipped the last card over. "Ace of Spades," he whispered. He swallowed, deeply. "Interesting slight of hand," he said. "Great trick."

"Do I look like a person who is fond of using such ruses?" Dierdre Hunt said to him, her voice harsh, disciplinary. Her stern demeanor morphed into concern, her tiny mouth a thin line as she lightly gripped Sam's wrist. "My dear Sam Tyler, it's far, far worse than you think."

She flipped over all three decks, revealing their underbellies to the bright light that invaded the kitchen. Splattered across the table like drops of black ink, like raven feathers, like portents of evil and death, fifty-two Ace of Spades furiously glared up at him, daring him to make sense of their presence

How much of this conversation could be considered real, he wondered, with Gene Hunt's mother acting suspiciously like the Test Card Girl?

"We all have our warning systems, Sam, but this one, I have to tell you, it's a big one." She slid the cards together and shuffled them neatly before placing them back into their box and then into her purse. "A different variation on the same theme, over and over and always the same outcome. Not enviable, you poor thing, not at all." She pushed her purse aside, and then took Sam's shaking hands in her own, cool grip.

"Fear is an important measure, Sam. It tells us when something isn't right, when there are dangers on the loose. It's a good thing to be afraid, it shows a sensitive conscience. To never feel fear is to feel nothing, and that is worse than all." She let his hands go, adding tea to his cup, a steaming brew that was meant to warm the chill that had invaded his understanding. "Drink it up, love. Gene will be here any minute, and you'll be going back to that horrible place. I do wish this didn't have to happen to you, but if it's any consolation, it will be over faster than you expect."

He felt as though all the blood had seeped out of his body, and he was now nothing but a pale, sickly shell.

"What will?" he dared to ask.

But the upstairs front door opened, and Gene's booming voice shouted down to them as he lumbered down the stairs to the kitchen. He hadn't taken off his camel coat, though his feet were conspicuously devoid of white loafers. He gave his mother a peck on the cheek and handed her the pack of cigarettes she'd requested.

"'Ta. You've saved my life," his mother said to him.

"Enjoy the telly, Mum."

"Of course I will," she promised.

Only partially mollified by his mother's approval, Gene barked loudly at Sam. "We're off. Just got the call in. We got business back at the cinema."

/

Annie, Ray and Chris were huddled against the far right outside wall of the cinema, in an area that tapered into an alleyway further in. The shadows had retreated from that section of the building, revealing the trio in sharp relief in the sunlight, their cold breath visible as spectres against the brick wall. Gene parked the Cortina across the street, and held Sam in his seat with the back of his hand pressed fiercely against Sam's stomach.

"Not one word about me Mum," Gene said. "And don't you ever let me hear you've gone back around there. I know your lot, sitting around your stinking flat, not knowing how to stop water from burning. She's no meal ticket, you. That's my Mum, and I won't have you harassing her for sweets and tea. I don't want you going back to that house, got it?"

"Trust me, Guv, I won't be going back to the House of Leaves any time soon," Sam promised.

Gene narrowed his eyes at Sam. "That some kind of criticism?"

"No. You're mother is a fascinating, delightful person, definitely nothing like I'd have expected. I half thought she was going to pull down a map of Tibet. I imagine you didn't get away with much when you were young."

"Map of the what? And no, no she didn't miss a lick."

"Never mind." Sam made a zipping motion across his mouth. "No one will know that DCI Gene Hunt cares about his mother."

"You got that right," Gene said, and abruptly got out of the car.

Though it was still sunny, there was a definite harsher chill to the air than had been evident earlier in the day, and Sam shivered within his leather jacket, his shoulders hunching to keep the cold out. A few stray pellets of snow drifted across the empty street, where they sparkled beneath the last dying breath of the sun before it would set in an hour's time. The ice glittered like fresh wrapping paper, like tinsel that had blown off of a decorated tree.

"We'd just got out of the flick when we found it," Sam heard Annie tell Gene. "We've only been here about ten or fifteen minutes."

Sam eyed the large building beside the cinema, a massive block of a structure that was simple in design, with small windows and even smaller balconies. A high rise, one of the 'new' constructions of 1973, made cheaply and prone to becoming a miserable slum in future years. Chris's sobbing echoed down the alleyway that divided the space between the apartment complex and the cinema. He was crouched low to the ground, his arm holding him steady over what had to be a corpse.

"Look, I'm sorry, Sir," Annie said to Gene, who had mumbled something Sam couldn't quite overhear. "Chris insisted, and I know it's not our job, but..."

"My God," Sam said as he approached the scene. He held his hand over his mouth, trying to stave back the foul stench and horror that was before him.

"If you're going to upchuck again, mind the shoes," Gene warned.

Chris's face was blotched red from crying, his expression one of such distress it was as if he'd found the very pit of hell and took a good look within it.

"Who'd do this?" he asked no one in particular. "Who would do such a rotten thing?"

"I tell you what this is," Ray said, munching on his cigarette nervously. "This is Satanic Ritual." Capital 'S'. Capital 'R'.

"I wouldn't doubt some moron got himself a good education this afternoon. Still, we're not the bloody RSPCA." Gene pursed his lips over the gory scene, and dared to poke at a stray blotch of black hair with his foot. A smear of blood streaked across the toes of his white loafers. "Pull yourself together, Chris, it's just a damned dog."

"Can't rightly blame him, Sir," Ray said. "Can understand why he'd be upset. Right nasty business, this. Poor thing, looks like it had a bit of collie to it." Ray's eyes became downcast, his voice small. "I like collies."

More than slightly confused, Sam crouched down on level with Chris and put a reassuring hand on his shoulder. "Chris, you've seen murdered human beings before and you've never fallen apart like this. The Guv is right, it's just a dog." He took a deep breath of cold air as he looked down on what was the brutal murder of a family pet. It was obvious that it had been beaten bloody, possibly with a blunt object like a steel pipe or a piece of wood. He dared to pick up a nearby stick and poke at the remnants of a hind leg. The skin and tendons fell away, the bones so shattered they could have been powder. Sam frowned as he let the stick fall away. He helped Chris get to his feet.

"Go on in and get a big garbage bag," Gene said to Ray as he nodded towards the cinema entrance. "Better get this cleaned up 'afore the kiddies come out and see this."

"Bring it back to the station, to the morgue," Sam said. "I want to get a better look at its injuries."

Four sets of eyes stared blankly at Sam in expressions of abject horror.

"What kind of sick bastard..." Gene began.

"Exactly," Sam replied. "Psychopaths often start with torturing animals before moving on to human beings. If we can figure out who did this we can possibly stop them before they get to the next level. Could be a child next, a little girl or...or a little boy."

"Well now, I'd never thought that way about Dr. Doolittle before. Now I know the reason for the fury in that Push-Me-Pull-Me's eyes."

"He's right, Guv," Annie's voice protested.

"Ah yes, RSPCA operative Cartwright makes her move. Leave it to a woman to go after the plight of the lesser beings—must be why she hangs about you so much, Sam. Listen, this may come as a shock to you, but policing has little to do with saving kittens from drownings and dogs from kicking."

"It's been proven, Sir," Annie said, more forceful this time. "Seriously disturbed people do things like this to animals. Their actions go way beyond the usual mischief, the torment they want to cause is for their own benefit, not for their peers. This is a classic example of psychopathic behaviour. I studied it at uni."

"Fabulous. I'm earning my degree, I guess this isn't a total waste of my time. Meanwhile, a slew of rapists and thieves have made their way to freedom because my officers are very, very busy staring at a dead dog on the pavement. Amazing thing, priorities."

"Guv, please. There's a list of three things that show a marked progression of how a psychopath evolves. One of the first signs is bed wetting beyond the age when children grow out of such things..."

"Well, there goes half my department," Gene said, eyeing Chris and Ray critically.

"Firestarting is second, just for the thrill of destruction, and third is cruelty to animals, and not just pulling wings off flies, but killing larger animals for personal pleasure, like dogs and cats. Like what was done here."

"The MacDonald Triad," Sam said.

"You've heard of it, Sam?"

"J. M. MacDonald, the father of criminal profiling," Sam said. "You could say he was a bit of a ground-breaker."

"Look, if you two lovebirds want to waste your time on this, it's on your own coffers," Gene said by way of gruff compromise. "I won't be authorizing any overtime."

"Thanks, Guv," Sam said.

"Oh don't thank me, Sammy boy," Gene said. "Thank all the poodles and Rin-Tin-Tins who'll be pissing on your feet in gratitude."


	4. Chapter 4

FLICKS—chapter four

A sporadic skeleton crew was all that remained of personnel in the station, a fact that made the isolation of the morgue more eerie than usual. Echoes from footsteps a few floors up crept into the cold, damp examining room, the white and blue tiles reflecting a further glow of death upon the room as the light above the gurney swayed back and forth.

"Fan's broken," Annie said, shivering. She rubbed her arms, trying to force some semblance of warmth through the thin cotton of her shirt. "Can't properly turn it off, and the wind from it keeps pushing the light fixture."

Her voice echoed across the mostly empty space, sending a further chill into the place that had little to do with temperature. Sam steeled himself as he pulled the gurney with the plastic bag on its surface towards him. He tossed a set of thick rubber gloves to Annie and grabbed another pair for himself. He pulled the dark blue rubber gloves over his hands, and then stood poised beside the gurney, his hands held high as though he were about to perform a serious surgical operation.

"Are we ready?" he asked Annie.

"I can't believe we're doing this."

Sam sighed, his blue gloved hands hesitating over the remains of the dog hidden within the black plastic bag. Perhaps she was right, and everything he was doing right now was based on an irrational, unfounded sense of fear. But fear had to have a source, he rationalized, it had to have some starting point from which to grow. Even if what was obvious to him wasn't the real cause.

"Look, Annie—The boy I saw in the seat in front of me, his head was knocked in with something similar to what killed this dog."

"I told you before, Sam, there was no little boy. That seat was empty."

"He turned and looked at me, Annie. He told me to 'shush'."

They stood on opposite sides of the gurney, the fan moving too fast, the light above them swinging back and forth, casting horrible shapes onto the blue and white tiled walls surrounding them. Sam took a long, shaky breath in, feeling he could never be understood.

"Sam...Maybe what you saw was a ghost."

Light and dark hurled themselves back and forth across her features, her eyes hooded in shadows. Her mouth was upturned in a small smile, but it was uncertain, as though what she'd said could be a true, possible explanation. There was no reason it couldn't be, Sam pondered. After all, he could be a ghost here himself, a fact that could explain away his apparent time travel, the multi-layered puzzle that was Dierdre Hunt's house, Dierdre herself, and always, hovering somewhere in the back of his consciousness, that incessant 'blip-blip-blip' that counted off each breath he took in some far distant shore known as the year 2006.

"If that's the case Annie, then this is worse than we thought. We're too late, the killer has already struck before."

The light fixture swung into an elliptical pattern, finally bringing Annie's eyes out of shadows and into calm, blue relief. "Oh, come on. You don't believe in all that rubbish do you? Ghosties and spooks." She let out a small laugh, its mirth absorbed into the depressing cold of the concrete floor at their feet, all joy siphoned from it. She frowned as she glanced up at Sam over the still wrapped corpse of the dog, shadows and light shrouding him in turns.

The Ace of Spades, all fifty-two staring up at him, like curled locks of torn, black hair, the sound of bones breaking, so horrible and real it had made him physically sick—A metaphor, maybe, for the ghost that was himself, the boy's beaten body showing how he really appeared, how he continued to only partially live. He was broken, fallen apart. He was beyond repair. That's what it could mean, that he had been beaten and nothing more could be done.

"I don't know," Sam replied.

He glanced up at her, and was surprised to see Annie was not paying attention to him, but was wide-eyed as she looked over his shoulder, her rubber gloved hand pointing nervously in the vicinity of the autopsy room entrance behind him. He gripped the side of the gurney, blue rubber grinding against his palm.

"What is it?"

"There's...There's someone there..."

Sam turned to face the intruder, his mouth dry, acrid. No, this was no hallucination, Annie was right. A tall, dark figure was advancing on them, his body sheathed in darkness, no figure distinguishable in the gloom.

"Hey..." it began.

Annie let out a weak scream, her hand covering her mouth, too terrified to let this thing that had wandered into the room with them to be offended by her terror.

"...Boss?" the voice finished.

The light swung onto the dark figure, and a bright image of Chris appeared before Sam and Annie, his face contorted into an expression of utter confusion.

"Oh, you bastard!" Annie exclaimed. She ran from her place on the opposite side of the gurney and took off her rubber gloves, which she used to violently thrash Chris with. "You rotter! What do you think you're doing, sneaking about like that!"

"I'm not sneaking!" Chris insisted as he tried and failed to deflect Annie's blows. "I've come round to help with the investigation." Annie stormed back to her spot at the opposite end of the gurney, rubber gloves getting snapped on in far too violent force. "Hey, boss," Chris repeated nervously to Sam. "So, how's it going?"

A rather familiar headache was creeping into Sam's consciousness, and he tried to keep it at bay by rubbing at his eyes with the heels of his hands. The light flicking back and forth had done little to help him in his plight, and now with the added hindrance of Chris it was unlikely anything was going to get accomplished. He had to say it, regardless of how cruel the words sounded as they spewed forth.

"Chris, you could barely keep yourself together when you found the dog, how in the hell are you going to help us?"

Chris smarted from this, as though physically hurt. "I was just shocked, is all," he said. "I can help."

"It's off the clock," Sam impatiently reminded him. "And I've got Annie here, so..."

Chris ignored him, and rolled up his sleeves. He snapped on a pair of blue rubber gloves with ease and approached the gurney with unexpected confidence. Without asking, he tore the garbage bag exactly in half, and looked on the gory mess within with a studied, practiced air. He fished through the remains until he found a specific piece of bone, which he then brushed blood and tissue off of with his thumb before holding it towards the swaying light fixture above them.

"The jaw bone," he explained. "Can tell you a lot about a dog. In this case, he's a border collie cross of some sort, you can tell by the shape. Not too old either, but not a puppy, he's got all of his adult teeth and they're in pretty good condition, not too much tartar for one. This dog was, I'd say, about three or four years old."

Chris placed the jaw bone aside on the slab and began to investigate the remains further, only to pause as he realized both Sam and Annie were staring at him, mute, puzzled frowns marring their features.

"Wh-What?" Chris asked. He was worried now. Was he supposed to be writing this stuff down? Did he royally gaff by not bringing in the tape recorder? He could feel beads of sweat already forming on his forehead, and his confident stance began to wilt.

Sam crossed his arms, blue rubber gloves peaking from beneath the black leather arms of his jacket. "Chris, much as we appreciate your help, just how do you know all this? Was there a David Attenborough special on the telly?"

"Who? No," Chris protested. "I got it off me Dad." He half shrugged and gave Sam and Annie a crooked smile. "He was an animal doctor. You know, All Creatures Great And Small, like that."

Sam was stunned. "Your dad was a veterinarian," Sam said, trying to fit this puzzlement of Chris together.

"You must know a lot about animals, then," Annie said, clearly impressed.

"Yeah. He used to get me to help him sometimes and I learned a few things here and there. Loved it, really. We always had dogs, cats, hedgehogs puttering about the house." Chris's shy smile faltered. "Can't really have that in the city, though. I miss it, having dogs about. Better than people, animals are, for the most part."

Sam felt a genuine pang of regret at his earlier judgment in regards to Chris, a fact that was becoming far too familiar. An explanation of why the dog's demise had affected him so severely was simply laying in wait and all he had to do was care enough to ask. 'How little I know him, and that's all my fault,' Sam thought.

Sam gave Chris a jovial punch on the shoulder. "Good to have you. You're a real asset," Sam said.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

Chris's confidence was boosted thanks to this approval, and he brought his attention back to the remains of the dog before him. "Doesn't have much by way of fleas or even flea dirt, so I'd say this one was well cared for. No mites in the ears, either. Nice, clean, well groomed dog. It is odd, though."

"How's that?" Sam asked.

"This here's a border collie," Chris said. "You never see them in the city, they're a working dog. Country-like, you know, herding the sheep."

"Whoever we're looking for, they used to live in the country," Annie concluded. "That narrows it down some. And if it wasn't a stray and as well cared for as you say, Chris, then it's possible it belongs to someone in the area it was found, or at least someone has seen it taken for walks."

Sam hovered over the remains, his eyes searching over the broken bones and the mess of blood and hair that was already beginning to decompose in the cool confines of the room. A piece of yellow caught his eye, and he stayed the swinging fixture above him with his hand, shining it purposely on the sliver that had grabbed his attention. He dared to point at it with a blue finger. "Chris, what's that?"

Chris pushed away a layer of black haired tissue, revealing a small, but significantly out of place shard. He picked it up gingerly, and held it out for Sam to get a better look. It was about an inch in length, mostly a golden yellow hue, but with a small band of red paint at the thicker end.

"It's a splinter of wood," Sam said. He narrowed his eyes and took it from Chris's steady grip. "Annie, get me an evidence bag."

"Do you think it's from the murder weapon, Boss?" Chris asked.

"I don't think so, Chris," Sam said, and nodded grimly. "I know so." He began to wrap the dog's remains back up in the plastic bag, and when finished he snapped off his blue rubber gloves, and tossed into a nearby sink to disinfect later. "I want another look at that cinema first thing tomorrow morning. We may have missed further evidence at the scene."

"But..Sir," Annie said. "I don't think the Guv will be too keen on that. You know, 'wasted manpower' and all."

"I need another look inside that theatre," Sam said, leaving little room for question or the future ire of his DCI. "Chris, ask around the neighbourhood tomorrow, see if anyone saw a border collie or if they know who owns one. Annie, I'll need you to come into the cinema with me. It was dark and crowded, maybe something was missed and don't worry about the Guv. Last I saw, cruelty to animals was still a punishable crime in this era so let's bring who did this in and read him the letter of the law before he gets the urge to kill again."

"That's great, Boss, but...The Guv's not going to be pleased about this."

"Now Chris," Sam said, smiling back at him. "Since when have I ever made it a point to make DCI Hunt happy?"

/

"I'm not happy," DCI Hunt said to Sam.

Early morning had brought with it a serious problem at the entrance to the cinema where The Exorcist had been shown the day before. An angry crowd had gathered and were picketing with placards in front of the cinema, the signs mostly signaling some apocalyptic devil worshipping fear that the film was going to doom all of Manchester to the fiery pits of hell. A rather prim middle-aged man was standing on a small crate, a blow horn in his hand as he condemned the film and its goers with such succinct phrases as 'Repent of the devil's workshop!' and 'The filth of mankind's idolatry!'. Beside him, a rather grizzled compatriot looked on with boredom, his eyes so bloodshot he could have been hung over. Sam was handed a pamphlet by an impossibly blue-eyed girl whose blond hair peeked out beneath a woolly red winter hat. He scanned the title quickly, gleaning 'The Festival of Light' and 'there are dangers to opening yourself to the forces of darkness' from its surface.

"I thought this is what you wanted to happen," Sam reminded him. "I believe you said something to the effect of 'They ought to shut that place down for showing such filth.'"

"I can't stand it. I've had enough of the tinsel, the reindeers, the bloody out of tune carols. If I have to hear one more word of the spirit of the season shite I'll be hunting down and hanging St. Nicholas meself. I say Rudolph would make a fine lamp for above my desk, Bambi be damned!"

A crowd of reporters and journalists had gathered around the protesters, and the discussion of demon possession and the corrupting influence of The Exorcist upon the souls of children became a fact instead of opinion. One lone priest stood in the midst of the fray, an elderly man with a calm intelligent demeanor who had earned a considerable amount of boos from the crowd for loudly proclaiming the film was an excellent treatise on the Catholic faith.

"Of course, he's got them all riled up now," Gene complained. "Damn priest. What does he know about religion?"

"Gene," Sam said, "Just where the hell are you on this issue? First you say you think the movie should be banned, and now that people want it to be you've changed your mind..."

"My mind doesn't change," Gene said, which was probably the truest statement of his life. "Nah, I'm saying it was shite, as in Harold And Maude was shite as in Woody Allen movies are shite. I can't scrape me shoes for being so knee deep in shite. I didn't say ban it because it causes the devil to go round popping people's heads around and making them spew their chips and egg, I say ban it because it's utter shite."

"So, in other words, if you don't like the movie it should be banned," Sam clarified. "So, by your reasoning, all we'll be allowed to see are mob movies and westerns. Pulp Fiction might barely squeeze past your artistically critical eye, but Lost In Translation will be banned on the outset. Odd, that, how it doesn't seem a bad thing when put quite that way."

Gene checked his watch impatiently. "Much as I'd love to hear you babble on about nothing that makes sense, these bastards have already wasted three hours of precious police time. I say it's time to rest these merry gentlemen and get them to toddle off the hell home. Oi! You! Touch that poster and I'm knocking your brains out against the glass!" Gene rubbed his hands together in glee. "That's it, then, about time we got some action and pounded in a martyr or two."

"We're not supposed to be inciting a riot," Sam reminded him.

"Bugger off. If they sing Good Christian Men Rejoice one more damned time I'll be begging for Satan to possess me."

Leaving Gene to contemplate the artistic freedoms of film-making and religious zealotry alike, Sam made his way to Annie, who stood to one side of the crowd, a bored expression on her face as the man with the megaphone began a new, rather simplistic, sermon. She shook her head as Sam stood beside her, a sad understanding in her eyes. "People only see what they want to," she said. "I thought the film was very moving. The priest sacrificed himself for the soul of that little girl, he did the right thing."

"I don't think half the people here have even seen the trailers let alone the whole movie," Sam said. "Makes it a lot easier to judge when you remain ignorant." He nodded towards the entrance of the cinema. "Come on, we might as well go in—We can say we have to check for any possible vandals who might be on the premises."

"You're looking for your ghost again," Annie said, barely hiding her amused smile. "Are you armed with holy water?"

Sam laughed. "Just fact finding, like I said last night. I'm not ready to send anyone to hell just yet."

/

Though well lit, the theatre had a damp, abandoned quality to it that was eerily similar to the morgue, the air cold and close, the rows upon rows of empty seats sending an unexpected message that here, in this place where nearly a hundred could gather, Sam Tyler was mostly alone.

"I honestly don't know what this is supposed to accomplish," Annie said.

"I just want to be sure. Maybe what I saw had some real meaning, like the murder had already happened, or it's going to happen."

"How is that possible, Sam? Are you not only from the future, but are you now saying you're the next Uri Geller?"

"More like Derek Acorah," Sam mumbled.

"Who?"

"Nothing." He scanned the rows until he came to the one he was sure he and Annie had been sitting in. "Down here. About seven seats in. There's that wad of gum I just about stepped on." He approached it and kicked it with the toe of his black shoe. He steadied his hand on the seat in front of him, only to instinctively pull his grip away. "This is it. This is where I was sitting, and he was in front of me here, right here."

He gingerly put both of his hands on the back of the seat, half expecting blood to seep wetly between his fingers. He was almost disappointed to find it perfectly dry. He crouched down in the confined space between the seats and carefully inspected the metal backing for any droplets of blood, his thumb teasing out a corner of red tweed fabric, searching the tiny amount of released fluffy white cotton beneath. No stains, no evidence of spilled blood, recently or otherwise. Sam sighed in frustration.

"If I had luminol this job would be a lot easier," he said.

Annie shrugged. "How would cleaner help?"

"It's not for cleaning, it's a special chemical solution that reacts with blood. Even old stains can be picked up using a black light..."

"Black light..." Annie repeated, a brow raised in disbelief.

"It's a special kind of..." Sam trailed off, knowing this conversation would go nowhere except further convince Annie he was mad. "In any event, it doesn't matter. I can't find any evidence of a murder here."

"You see, I told you. You got upset over nothing."

The door to the theatre suddenly slammed open, startling them both. Annie's hand was on her heart, her eyes wide and guilty in her treason from her post with Sam. Gene Hunt stood above them, a cigarette fiercely gripped between his lips.

"What are you lot doing in here? The action's all outside!" He dug his hands into the pockets of his camel coat and surveyed his surroundings, his angry mood quickly dissipating. "Hmph. Nice and quiet in here."

"We were checking for possible vandals," Annie said, her quick-save excuse coming in handy. But Sam didn't corroborate her story, in fact he remained quiet, his knees quaking as he stared at the seat in front of him.

Sitting in the chair, his small head level with the back of the seat, a small boy with black hair turned to look at him. His index finger met his tiny, innocent lips.

"Shhh."

Crack! Crrr. Crrr. Crack!

Bile crept its way back into Sam's throat, and he struggled to swallow it back.

"Sam?"

"Give over, don't tell me he's going to upchuck again! Bloody hell, I'm surprised you don't have a placard of your own, one what reads: Hello My Name Is Sam Tyler And Scary Movies Make Me Cry And Spew."

"He's right there," Sam hoarsely whispered to Annie.

"There's no one, Sam," she said, her hand grazing the bloodied pieces of the child's skull as she moved her touch close to his.

Sam squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed them fiercely with the heels of his hands. He blinked them open, but it was no use, the corpse remained, blood dripping onto the floor of the theatre, bone shards floating like bits of chalk within the black puddle. He could see the broken limbs, the white splinters that jutted out through the child's jeans, through the cotton of his t-shirt.

He tore his eyes away to try and garner some semblance of understanding from Annie, but there was nothing, only a calm, almost patronizing sympathy that made her take his arm and guide him away from the seat. He wanted to be angry with her, to wrench himself away and force her, somehow, to see this thing that only he had privy to. But he couldn't, not when her touch was all that remained against this rift in his sanity.

"Break time's over!" Gene boomed down at them as he turned to leave. "The esteemed Reverend Blowhorn has started a lecture on the sinful ills of boozing and smoking—Which has reminded me I'm thirsty and I'm running out of fags. Come on, come on, let's make sure the saints go marching home and break it up out there."

A loud click gave Gene pause at the top of the stairs. Annie, who was just behind Sam, stopped in mid step. She took a sharp intake of breath as she turned around, and even Gene pursed his lips in thought.

A single seat had fallen open.

"Must be a broken spring," Gene said, shrugging as he left the theatre.

"I'm not seeing things, Annie," Sam insisted behind her, his breath uneven, caught in the grip of fear.

"He's still there."


	5. Chapter 5

FLICKS—chapter five

Still shaken, Sam followed Gene out of the theatre and into the lobby of the cinema. The grim faced porter glared at them as they passed him and he pressed a brown envelope into Sam's hand as though he was issuing a warrant for his arrest. Puzzled, Sam opened it, and was surprised to find a free pass voucher valid for up to four films.

"Not bad, is it?" Annie remarked. "I can come here every weekend for an entire month."

Sam shook his head, and handed his voucher to Annie. "Here, make it two months. I'd rather watch movies at home."

"You're mad, the telly and the cinema can hardly compare."

He watched as Gene swaggered out the front door of the cinema, and he purposefully lagged behind, taking in the almost religious ambiance that infiltrated the cinema lobby. Movie posters adorned the walls, proclaiming the next Oscar nominees, the carpet beneath his feet was a deep red, a regal colour made to imprint the influence of Hollywood on this sacred space. Some of the patrons were filtering out of the film next door to The Exorcist, their hair neatly done, clothes clean and pressed. Going to the movies was still a big event in 1973, and if the line-up circling around the corner of the building didn't give any indication that The Exorcist had caused a buzz, certainly the added publicity of what a simple film could do the human psyche had proved its point. Everyone wants to tempt fate, Sam thought. Even though it terrifies us, we all want to know what flickers in the dark.

"Boss!"

Sam tore his gaze away from the mature crowd that was filtering into the theatre he had just left, a morbid curiosity filling him as he wondered who was going to sit in that opened seat. He turned to find Chris standing breathless in front of him, his delighted mood unhindered by Sam's morose demeanor.

"I found the owner of the dog!" he happily exclaimed. He nodded at Annie. "It was like you said, they don't live far, in fact they just live..."

"In the apartment complex next door," Sam finished.

Chris faltered slightly, the pencil in his hand tapping the side of his head in thought. "Yeah, Boss, how did you guess?"

"It's the only apartment complex near here," Sam said. "Otherwise, the whole street is nothing but shops."

"That's wonderful, Chris," Annie said, offering encouragement against Sam's apparent criticism. "Have you got a name for us?"

Chris waved his pencil at Annie excitedly, only to lose his grip on it which sent it flying in the vicinity of the popcorn popper. It met the hot metal popper with a loud clang. "Marjorie Williams," he said, more quietly than perhaps first intended due to the incinerating glare from the theatre porter. "She lives on the fourth floor."

/

Though clean and devoid of the usual clutter that apartment complexes often devolved into, the new building already had a worn, depressed aura to it, a fact that no amount of fresh paint was ever going to eradicate. The hallway on the fourth floor was noisy, and it was clear the apartments had little to no soundproofing, the doors made up of thin veneer and press board, the walls equally paper in construction. Sam found he could easily superimpose the future upon the place, and he envisioned the torn bamboo-relief wallpaper that would never be replaced, the myriad stains and cigarette burns that would litter the fibres of the bright orange carpet beneath their feet. Even now the doors to the apartments were painted a bright, peacock blue and not for the first time Sam wondered if every interior designer of the seventies was colour blind.

The cries of a miserable infant was the prevalent sound in the hall, its unhappy wailing seeping into and through the walls, to echo down the back stairs. The baby lived at the end of the hall, about five doors down from Marjorie Williams, and as Sam followed the sound to a specific apartment, the door opened a tiny crack, revealing a little girl no older than six years. She stood wary in the half-open door as she peered back at Sam, her infant sister held expertly in her small arms.

"Cassie! Close that bloody door!" he heard her mother shout, a distinctive alcoholic cadence to the demand. She shyly did as told, but the closed door did little to muffle the baby's cries.

"This is it," Chris said, checking his notes. He steeled himself in front of the ugly blue door, the surface of it so shiny it looked as though the paint were still wet. 4-24B, the home of Marjorie Williams. Chris's gentle taps on the door echoed down the hallway like gunfire. There would be no privacy here, Sam mused. The neighbours would know if you sneezed let alone had company.

The door was opened by a thin, tired woman in her mid-thirties who was immediately suspicious of the grim faced trio who stood in her door frame. A red mark ringed in yellow was visible on her cheek, the last remnants of a healing bruise. "What is it?" she asked.

"We're the police, Mrs. Williams," Chris said. "We regret to inform you there's been a terrible tragedy."

Marjorie Williams put her palm to her mouth in horror. "No, not my Georgie!" she shouted, her voice a near scream.

"Mrs. Williams..." Sam tried to interject.

"Is that his name?" Chris asked.

"Yes! Oh my God! What's happened to him, what's wrong with my Georgie?"

"Chris, I don't think..."

"He's been beaten, very badly," Chris said, ignoring Sam.

Marjorie Williams looked about ready to collapse to the floor, and Sam braced himself for a terrible scene when he was saved by a quiet, rather flat voice that was carried out of the vicinity of the living room and into the hall with them.

"Georgie's in his room."

Mrs. Williams frowned, and Sam looked past her shoulder and into her flat. There were scant furnishings, and what had found its place there were clearly hand-me-downs. An overturned box served as a coffee table, a battered velvet green couch sat long and uninviting against the living room wall. A boy of about ten to twelve years old sat on the floor in front of a small black and white television set where aluminum foil had been wrapped around the antennae in a vain attempt to get better reception.

"James, go and check, the police here say something's happened to him."

"Mrs. Williams, it's not..."

The boy known as James remained unmoving on the floor in front of the television, completely oblivious to his mother's panic. Sam tried to get a better view of what had so gripped the boy's attention, but the television was constantly morphing out of focus, its picture flickering back and forth between rolling frames and static snow. He could hear snippets of dialogue, a few rounds of gunfire and the odd tough guy shout.

Marjorie Williams was furious. She marched up to the boy she'd called James and in one fluid movement she slapped him full across the face. The sound of the blow echoed fiercely down the hall, the force of it making Sam wince.

"Go and check!" she screamed at him.

James barely reacted to this act of violence, a sad fact that told Sam the boy was used to this. He slowly got up off the floor and lumbered down the small corridor that presumably led to the bedrooms, and Sam got a better look at him. He had sandy brown, shoulder length hair, its cut revealing it had once been short but through negligence it had grown long. His eyes were hidden beneath a thick set of Buddy Holly glasses which had been broken in half. A yellowed wad of clear tape held the two pieces together over the bridge of his nose. He was thin and gangly, his jeans and t-shirt fitting him in sloppy carelessness.

"I don't know what I'm going to do with him, he's so damned lazy." She blinked back tears as she turned her attention back on Chris. "I'm sorry, what did you say about my boy, about my little Georgie?"

Chris shrank under her concern, his mistake realised too late. "It's not about your boy, Ma'am. It's about your dog."

Marjorie Williams wiped a stray tear that had escaped from the corner of her eye and stared at Chris. "My what?"

"Your dog, Ma'am."

"I heard you, you retard, I'm not deaf."

James trundled back from the hall and instantly slumped to the floor in front of the television. "He's got his Lego," he said.

"That bloody dog," Marjorie said, ignoring him. She fished a cigarette out of a jacket that was hanging on a hook behind her and lit it quickly. She took rapid, angry puffs from it as she spoke. "This figures, it really does. That damned thing was so hyper, and it kept messing the floor when James was too bloody lazy to take it out when he was supposed to. I kept telling him to leave it when we moved here, but oh no, he had to take that damned dog. I say whatever's happened serves him right, he's an irresponsible little shit."

James sat in front of the television, mute. He was clearly long since immune to his mother's taunts.

"Your dog is dead, Ma'am," Chris said.

"So? What do you want me to do, give it a funeral?" She blew a plume of angry smoke in Chris's face. "You'd better not be fining me or nothing. I weren't the one who was supposed to be taking care of that thing."

"Border collie," Sam said. "They're used for herding sheep. I take you've all just moved here from the country."

"Damned right. There's only so much pig shit and muck a girl can take. Found my proper getaway here, I have, there's better pickings here and I do like my variety." She gave Sam a knowing smile that left little by way of imagination.

"Like the one that left that mark on your cheek?" Sam observed.

"Yeah," Marjorie said, smiling through her cigarette. "A bit of rough and tumble's not all bad, you ought to try it sometime." She gave Annie a once-over, quickly assessing her. "Straight laced and prim and proper, that's all common enough. Boring, though, ain't it?" She gave Sam a pointed, lascivious grin. "Pop round next time when you're looking for the novelty act."

/

"I think she did the dog in herself," Annie said, annoyed.

"I can't believe someone can be so heartless. I don't rightly trust anyone who doesn't like animals." Chris pocketed his notes, his hope in humanity clearly crushed.

"I feel so bad for that boy, the one she called James. I'm betting that dog was his only friend in the world, and now he's all alone." Annie shook her head, her arms crossed as they walked out of the apartment complex and into the cold air outside. "It's just wrong. If you can't take care of a dog, what right do you have to take care of kids?"

The cinema beside them was now partially abandoned, with only a few stragglers with apocalyptic placards milling about the front entrance. The patrons who had lined up were now safely ensconced in the theatre where their souls would be ruined by director William Friedkin. Sam checked his watch and to his dismay it was just past noon—This day had been exhaustingly long, and he was tired and hungry. He rubbed his eyes with his thumbs and sighed. "I say a man who likes smacking women about might not be much of an animal lover, especially an animal that might leave a mess in his shoes. We'll head back to the station, see what the books have to say about dear Mrs. Williams..."

"You'll do nothing of the sort!" Gene's deep voice suddenly boomed behind him. "Listen here, Sammy Boy, the case of the Scooby Doo Slaughterer is officially closed. You two, Sonny and Cher—Get your asses back at the station and look for some real crimes to solve and leave the animal rights business to Greenpeace!"

Thus told, Annie and Chris made a quick exit, Chris's head down as he opened his car door for Annie. He was obviously still upset over his interview with the nasty Mrs. Williams, and Sam made a private resolve to take advantage of this later on. He had to know who had beaten the dog, a small child's life hung in the balance as a result of it.

Gene's car keys dangled in his grip as he walked away from both the cinema and the apartment complex, Sam following only slightly behind. "Damn protesters clogged up the lot," Gene complained. "I had to park all the bloody hell up here. If there's so much as a scratch..."

Their journey took them along the main street, where various shops mostly consisting of used record stores and junk sales were lined up in crowded coziness against the pavement. Sam paused in front of a repair shop, old washing machines and transistor radios squatting in the window amidst unidentifiable pieces of motors and fan belts. Beneath the shadow of an old ringer-washer a battered television peeked out of the window, its black and white picture in half decent focus. The sound was fairly loud, which Sam felt odd, but even stranger was the appearance of the open lecturer, his hands dusted with chalk as he scribbled a mess of odd symbols and numbers onto the blackboard beside him.

"It's bloody shocking, the fact that you lot seem to be working better looking for the killer of a dead dog than you ever have investigating human murders. That dismembered pooch has gone and turned Chris into a regular Dick Tracy," Gene complained. He stopped and grumbled in annoyance when he saw that Sam had paused in front of the shop window. "It ain't no hunch you've got, Tyler, no matter what you and that woman say. You got allergies, that's what. Learn the bloody difference."

Gene's words drifted like the small pellets of snow that rolled in the cold breeze down the street, collecting in white piles against the corners of the shops. The physics lecturer had his eyes on Sam, pulling him in.

"The interesting process in this theory is that the cat is actually existing in three states at the same time. Listen carefully Sam, the three states are co-existing...It is very important that you grasp this concept and..."

Without warning the television was turned off, and jolted out of his vision Sam watched as the owner of the shop took it out of the store window and handed it, now fully repaired, to its original owner. Sam slapped his palm against the glass in frustration, his breath uneven and leaving a cloud of heated moisture on the transparent surface, obscuring his view of the interior of the shop. He felt a rising panic well within him, knowing that he had to find a way to get the message back. His mind could only just hover around the lecture the physics professor had been giving, a haunting familiarity about it. He'd learned something about this in middle school, a weird theory, an odd mathematical philosophy that he'd never quite been able to grasp an understanding of.

"Schroedinger's cat," Sam said.

"For God's sake, Sam, let the damned kittens drown."

He needed to understand this, Sam suddenly realised. He had to find a way to see the rest of the lecture, to get a grip on why this was so important, but the one method of relay had been wrenched from him, and even this had been obscured and out of focus, a fuzzy realm of static covering the knowledge. No, he needed something that would work properly, would be clear and give him a good reception. Another TV—One that was top of the line...

"I have to go your mother's house, right now," Sam blurted to Gene.

"And so this begs of us the great and mysterious question: Why?"

Sam patted down his leather jacket, and since he had a genuine sense of urgency propelling him towards his doom, he gave a good show of panic. "It's my wallet. I lost it, I think I left it there at your mother's house. No, I know I left it there!" He held his hands out imploringly to Gene. "I have to pay the rent this afternoon, Guv. Please, it's important I get to your mum's house...To get my wallet."

Gene's pursed lips suggested he wasn't so sure about this excuse. "I swear, Tyler, if you were a baby you couldn't keep a nappie on for fear of it having a use. Get in the damned car, and stay there. I'll pop in myself and find it."

He gave Sam a murderous glare in warning.

"Don't even think about crumpets and tea."


	6. Chapter 6

FLICKS—chapter six

Of course, Dierdre Hunt was more than pleased to have unexpected company and she would have none of Gene's insistence that Sam wait in the car while Gene went in and searched out the missing wallet. She bid Sam to come in from the cold damp outside, promises of a hot toddy and jam slathered biscuits were weighed on him in further encouragement.

"Tch, really, Gene," his mother said to him, dismay evident in the tight lines around her mouth. "You'd leave that poor boy out there in the cold and the wet to catch the pneumonia." She'd said this as though she were suggesting Gene was a monstrous torturer and thus all offers of a hot toddy to warm his particularly chilly bones were strictly off.

"We're on duty, Mum, I'm sorry, we can't stay..."

"You stay here as long as you like, Sam," Dierdre said, pointedly ignoring Gene. "Take a look about, see if you can find what you're looking for. Wallet, was it? I can't half expect you to have any luck, my dear, this place is such a crowded little clutter box, there's so many hiding places for it to be lost forever to you. Now, then, that's it, in the door with you and mind you take off your shoes."

Dierdre Hunt's home was intended to be warm and inviting against the damp outside, but Sam felt little comfort here, not with his nerves itching to get into her living room and somehow manage to gain a glimpse of subconscious knowledge from her ugly new colour television. He shivered as he slipped off his shoes and placed them neatly beside the white loafers Gene had casually tossed into a pile against the wall.

Gene kept his camel coat on. "Mum...Really, I'd love to stay, but there's some business back at the station. A rotten murder, maybe even a possible hostage situation...We was on our way to fixing the problem up when Sam here remembered he'd forgotten his wallet..." Gene looked Sam over and shook his head, reinforcing his lying excuse that the only reason he had to leave his duty was because his junior officer had a bout of unexpected Alzheimer's. He was doing his best to make Sam look imperfect—Like a man who most definitely did not deserve Dierdre Hunt's specialty hot toddy.

"People do rotten things to each other all the time," Dierdre tutted, her hands clasped primly over her lace apron. "I doubt very much that people will stop murdering each other just because you took a few moments to have a cup of tea."

"I got a lot of work, Mum. Murder, hostages and a stupid dog, too."

Dierdre Hunt had placed her hands on Sam's shoulders, forcing his leather jacket off. She paused as she took in Gene's words. "A dog?"

"Just some stupid thing. Some moron beat a dog to death," Gene said, dismissive.

Dierdre Hunt's grip on Sam's shoulders became rigid, and she quickly pulled his leather jacket back on him, her hands shakily smoothing out the lines her grip had caused. "How absolutely dreadful," she said, a strictly restrained horror evident in her voice as she spoke to Gene. "You poor thing, having to deal with a tragedy like that."

"Actually, it's my case," Sam interjected.

"Awful, just awful," the elder Mrs. Hunt tutted, and she gently patted Sam's hand. Murderers and hostages held no sway for her sympathies, but as with most people deadened to the horrors humanity visited upon itself, the perceived innocence of animals created a strange storage space in the human psyche for empathy. Sam gave Mrs. Hunt's stricken expression his most understanding smile, and he wondered what she would do in future when faced with the armed forces of PETA showing what cows suffered to put cream on her table, or the unsanitary, vile plight of crammed chickens and their new heightened risks of salmonella poisoning. Sam reasoned Mrs. Hunt was a practical woman, and with her rather heightened senses it was clear that the future had her leaving Gene scandalized and scarred for the remainder of his life when, after seeing a Nina Hagen video circa 1987, she would decry all beef and poultry and officially declare herself vegan. Granted, this was pure speculation on Sam's part—Since he hadn't seen Gene eat anything save greasy chips, ale, cigarettes and juicy fruit gum it was perhaps a fact that his DCI was himself an unwitting vegetarian already.

"What did I tell you," Gene muttered to Sam. "Murder doesn't make them bat an eyelash, but oh, a dead dog—Run for the hills, Armageddon is nigh!"

"Gene and I will search for your wallet in the kitchen, and Sam you can check the living room, though as I said, I'm not sure it will be much use. Gene, dear, I do need you to take a look at one of the cupboards, the one just above the sink. It's a bit loose, and it's been causing me a bit of bother."

"Loose cupboard?" Gene asked. "But Roger just installed them last weekend."

Dierdre shook her head, annoyed. "I don't think he properly knew what he was doing," she said. "I don't know where you found him, Gene, but he's not very good, I'll tell you that."

Her tiny form darted out of the front hall and sharply to the right where an opening leading to her basement, but not a basement, where a kitchen may or may not still exist. Sam felt an involuntary shudder course through him as he followed her, Gene's burly form behind him, casting a long shadow over the already ill lit hallway before him.

"I can't believe that bastard Roger," Gene fumed. "The only reason I bought that telly off him was because he got the cabinets done so quick and they looked right enough."

Sam paused in front of the three doors, a blinking sensation making its way behind his eyes as he took in the confused juxtaposition Gene had handed him. "How do you figure a cabinet maker knows anything about televisions?" Sam asked.

"It's encased in wood, ain't it? Besides, it's his proper business, he sells tellies and radios at his shop."

"Which then begs one to ask the question: Why would a man who sells televisions for a living be hired to build cabinets in your mother's kitchen?"

"He owed me one. I told you, I got some of the misdemeanors shaved off. He used to build cabinets about ten years ago. Selling tellies has only been a new thing for him."

"I just don't get the reasoning behind this," Sam said. "If someone was coming into my home to remodel I'd be getting more than just a promise that he'd do the job right. Didn't you check his references, see some examples in other's people's homes of his handiwork?" Sam frowned, a point Gene had brought up picking at the back of his brain. "Ten years ago? That's a long time to be out of practice of one's trade—What was he doing during that time?"

"Ten years, you dolt. For armed robbery and assault!"

Sam considered making the point that if one was seeking good workmanship and ethical business practices, hiring an ex-con and strong arming him to do 'favours' for your mother was probably not the wisest investment move. As it was, he chewed on his words, refusing to let this argument grow between them.

"I think this may explain the odd layout of this house," Sam said.

"If you're letting out some of that nutter talk again, I'm pounding you into drywall dust. Go on, get searching, I have to check that bloody cabinet."

Sam stood in front of the three doors, while Dierdre Hunt's voice sang upwards from somewhere in the basement of the house, from that mysterious netherworld known as her kitchen. "Gene!" she shouted. "I thought you were in a hurry!"

"Coming Mum, be right down! Listen, Sam, I got a bone to pick before we get back to the station, so keep the next hour or two on your schedule free and clear. That bastard Roger's going to be hearing from me before this day is done and I need a witness to save me from committing bloody murder."

"Yes...So extortion and trumped up charges are still on the table, then?"

"Piss off and find your damned wallet."

Gene descended into the entrance in the middle of the main staircase, his steps echoing upwards as he made his way down, Dierdre's voice likewise carried into the dark hallway Sam had found himself in. "It's this one here," he heard her say. "Look at how it just gapes open. Terrible work, he ought to be ashamed to call himself a carpenter."

Sam opened the second door in the hallway, expecting to find the cluttered living room with its myriad antiques and layers of books and the life paraphernalia of the Hunt family. Instead, he was greeted by the quiet calm of a blue and white tiled loo. He closed the door carefully, his original unease invading him like a slow acting disease. He opened the door that he was sure held the loo the last time he'd been here, but instead he earned a good view of the back yard, ice lining the cracked window on the back screen door. He closed this door gently, and taking a deep breath he opened door number three, the one containing his prize. The cluttered space within seemed to recognize him instantly, and he was put further at unease by the way the objects in the room crowded in on him, forcing him to acknowledge all of their petty details, from the titles of the piles of books on the floor to the delicate flower inlay of a baroque styled dresser. He was dizzy from the bombardment, and he forced himself to focus on the one thing in the room that screamed out for attention like a rotten, spoiled child wired on sweets. The large, floor model colour television squatted in front of him, the secrets hiding within it in physics lectures waiting impatiently for Sam to approach the television and with one strong pull of the knob bring all of the answers to his questions to hallelujah light.

Sam took a deep breath, held it in expectation, and turned the knob to 'on'.

He waited.

And waited.

Nothing.

A massive clang suddenly erupted through the entire house, its resonance shaking the various bric a brac that adorned the cramped room, books toppling from their piles into a scattered mess behind Sam. The cabinet door in the kitchen beneath the house had lost its hold and broken its fall on Gene's head. Gene's voice boomed through the living room, right up into the very attic rafters: "Goddammit!"

"Oh my, the language!" Sam heard Dierdre Hunt exclaim over the clamor. "There's none of that talk in this house, young man. Gene Hunt, don't you think for a second that I believe you are too old to taste a bar of soap!"

"For God's sake, Mum, it fell on me bloody head!"

"Don't be a baby, you aren't bleeding, and it's nothing a bit of a bag of ice can't cure. Tch, tch—Here, hold this on your head, and stop your flinching! Goodness me, grown man like you and you still take a bump on the noggin like a five year old. You always were a bit of a crybaby with this sort of thing...I remember when..."

Sam frowned and turned the knob of the telly on and off, an action which caused a strange hissing sound to emit from the digestive innards of the box. He pressed his ear against the wood veneer on the top of the television, a distinctive hum telling him that power was indeed making its way through the tangled mess of wired electronics within. Sam stood in front of it, puzzled by the television's blank face.

A good five to ten minutes passed before the picture gradually faded into view. By this time Gene had lumbered up the stairs, curse words barely discernible beneath his wheezing gasps, his shadow invading the living room as he peeked in on Sam. "Have you found it yet?" he asked.

Sam glanced up at him, and frowned at the packet of frozen peas Gene held against his forehead—His mother's unconventional first aid.

"The telly's broken," Sam said. The physics professor had at last come into view, but he was a ghastly shade of orange that no amount of colour tweaking could fix. "It didn't come on right away, and the sound is off." Sam demonstrated this by turned the volume to its maximum and gaining little save static feedback. "I think the speakers are blown."

Gene stood shocked in the doorway, the packet of peas melting, water dripping down the side of his face and onto the shoulder of his camel coat. "Mum, I thought you said it was working."

"You know how these things are," Dierdre Hunt said behind him. She poked her head around Gene's waist and waved at Sam. "Did you find what you were looking for, dear?"

Sam reached into his pocket and took out his wallet. "Yeah. Thank you very much Mrs. Hunt, for letting me in to search."

"Such manners. Here, take this with you." Her hand was outstretched past Gene's waist, and Sam was forced to take the mug of tea and whiskey in much the same effort people of that time would scale the Berlin Wall. "You know, Gene, the tube was probably ready to blow, or it got shook up a bit in delivery. In any case, I'm a far more concerned about those cupboards..."

Gene was quiet. As Sam sipped at the gorgeous hot liquid that Dierdre Hunt had conjured up, its warmth soothing a fraction of his own disappointment, Gene stood in front of him, an injured pillar of misery. Gene was staring at the television he'd gotten for his mother for Christmas, and if Sam didn't know any better he could have sworn the large man was about to cry. Which he didn't, of course. He turned his disappointment into rage at Sam instead.

"What did you do to it?" Gene shouted.

Sam quietly took another sip of his glorious hot toddy. "I turned it on," he said, calmly. "Gene, it's broken. There's nothing for it but to get it repaired and then maybe it'll work right. It took nearly ten minutes to get a picture."

"Of course it did, big telly like that, you need ten minutes for it to warm up properly," Gene said. Still, he couldn't remain in denial for long. He discarded the back of frozen peas into Sam's free hand and then banged the top of the television with his fist, an action which served to send the physics professor into an even redder hue. "Bastard Roger," he muttered under his breath. "Drink up, Dorothy. We've got a customer service complaint to make."

/

Rocking Roger's Radio and Television Wholesale Emporium was hardly the leader in modern shopping, as evidenced by the fact that the sign above the storefront was twice the width of the actual shop. As Sam inched his way into the crowded cubby of a store, his hip bumping into shelving with painful accuracy, he found himself actually longing for the spacious anonymity of a box store. Roger's closet-turned-shop held a wide variety of radios that littered the front sales desk in haphazard layers, the vast array of mostly portable televisions lining his walls in equally archaeological depths. There was a mixture of old and new in Roger's shop, Sam noted, with some of the supposedly 'new' portable tellies already showing signs of yellowing on their off white plastic surfaces. Near the back of the store lay a couple of monolithic floor models, their dinosaur bodies laying beneath the piles of more modern televisions like unearthed fossils. Half of the televisions were on, tuned to the same channel. Some children's show, Sam noted, one about a large purple blob that morphed itself into strange, vaguely useful, shapes.

Gene's white loafered foot found a small portable television near the front of the store, and in one swift kick he pounded its glass face in. The explosion of glass echoed into the store's confines, the din flushing out a balding man out of the back room, his grip firm on a large clipboard.

"What the bloody hell...Oh, of course, it would be you!"

"Merry Christmas, Roger. Enjoy your turkey? No, no, that's right, you couldn't possibly have since you gave one to my mother." Without hesitation, Gene grabbed Roger by the shoulders and pinned him against the wall of televisions behind him. "You weasel bastard," Gene spat into his face. "That telly what you sold me last week don't work, and I'm not partial to your cabinet making skills either."

"Come on! I got the delivery done as promised! I had to give up dinner with me in-laws thanks to you. The wife is still fuming over it."

"My heart bleeds. It's a shame you can't keep your appointments, Roger. Maybe we should have a look at that little schedule of yours, see if any familiar names pop up, ones who might supply a bit of inventory for your shop here."

"I run a reputable business," Roger said, though it was clear he didn't believe the lie himself.

"Sure you do, Roger. Sure. That's why you're going to give my mother a brand spanking new telly, one that's working perfectly and is a prime example of human ingenuity. Then, when your back is properly broken from hauling in and out about a tonne of mahogany and steel, you're going into my mother's kitchen and you're going to install the most beautiful set of cabinets this side of the Taj Mahal. If you want an idea of what I'm going for, I want the Sistine Chapel to be green with envy. You got that?"

Sam wanly looked on as Roger broke into a sweat beneath Gene's ire. Gene's face was so red with rage the purple bruise on his forehead from the fallen cupboard was nearly masked. Sam kicked the broken glass out of his way as he made his way further into the shop, Roger's promises to give Gene's mother a new, only slightly smaller but superiour floor model television muffled beneath the onslaught of tinny children's music emitting from the various televisions lining the walls. The purple blob had been joined by a couple of others, a complex family of undefined shapes. Barbamomma, Barbapoppa, Barba...

"Sam."

The cartoon faded from the various televisions, a synchronized rolling of the screens grabbing Sam's attention. Suddenly in focus, upon dozens and dozens of televisions, the physics professor was scribbling madly on the chalkboard, his powdery fingerprints littering every surface around him. The tiny shop echoed with the sound of a blipping heart monitor, the gasp and tug of a ventilator sending a sick understanding through Sam's body.

"...We know this is all too technical for you, this isn't your area of expertise. But if you can grab the basic concept that the cat is not only alive and dead within the box, but also not there at all, you can also grasp that what determines if the cat lives or dies is the observer, who acts as a catalyst for the event to actually take place. However, without the knowledge of whether the cat is alive or dead, it exists in that hovering dual state, its possibilities limited only by the person who dares to open the box and get a good look at the truth apparently within it.

However, further theories have suggested that the observer is not the deciding factor of an event, and in fact, the cat actually does live and die with a universe created for each hypothesis. This is the Multiple Worlds Theory, wherein every possibility not only has the potential to happen, but in fact does happen, creating billions of parallel worlds. This is a very real worry for you, Sam, since this interferes with the project—We can't have you fading out into the billions of possibilities, we can't bring you back if you're untraceable. You have to focus and make sure you've properly explored the one solution that keeps you here on our radar. We're counting on you..."

"To do what?" Sam asked, more confused than ever. "What project? What are you talking about?"

"Clickety-click, Barba trick."

The bubble shaped television he had focused on had reverted back to the children's show, and Gene had clearly finished up his business with Roger if his grip on the back of the man's neck was any indication. "Four o'clock and not a moment later," Gene warned him. "I'll be waiting for you."

He shoved Roger off and then motioned for Sam to follow him, his mood ominous. "I'll be late getting into the pub thanks to that bastard," Gene complained. "Get yourself to The Railway Arms tonight, though lucky you has already had a head start with me Mum's toddy." Gene glared at Sam, his anger coming from all directions—from broken cabinets and televisions to Sam's charming of his own mother to dead dogs and all of the day's events looping backwards and forwards through his rage. "Haven't bloody well been to the pub in a fortnight. Just make sure Nelson hasn't forgotten who I am and have a pint waiting. It's the least you can do for that search and rescue on your wallet."


	7. Chapter 7

FLICKS—chapter seven

The Railway Arms was crowded to nearly full capacity, harbouring the post-Christmas and pre-New Year's Eve refugees who were at a loss for filling in the holidays with friends and family. Ray was in particularly good form as he brought a dart home in the bull's eye of the dart board, a pint handed to him which he happily downed in three quick gulps. Sam sat on a stool at the bar, his own pint mostly untouched. Despite their current displacement, the conversations in the pub revolved around family get togethers, meals of black pudding and tender portions of moist turkey. Sam had spent most of Christmas day alone in his flat, his dreams giving him vocal glimpses of what his true bedside looked like. He'd heard his mother's soft weeping superimposed upon the sounds of the monitors, the nurses tending him talking to one another of their own plans, the constant, sad refrains of Merry Christmas where no merriment dared to remain. It had all been a endurance test, a depressing affair that Sam hoped would be over and forgotten as quick as it had arrived. He could easily relate to Gene in this regard. He took a deep swallow of his pint in respect for the comradery of his fellow man's seasonal misery.

A small white box was suddenly placed in front of him, a simple plastic red bow stuck onto the top lid. Sam frowned as he took it, Annie's warm presence beside him on the stool next to his easing some of his acknowledged unhappiness.

"It's just a little something. Go on, open it."

Sam slowly twirled the box in a circle with his fingers, the red bow catching the twinkling lights above the bar. "I can't accept this. I didn't get you anything."

"That doesn't matter. What's the point of giving if you just expect something in return? Besides, I got the impression your holidays haven't gone on too well."

"You have astounding intuition," Sam said, and he felt he welcomed the close proximity of her warmth, the gentle nudge she gave him towards positivity. Whatever she gave him as a gift would be moot, he thought. Just having her here, sitting on the stool beside him was enough to make him happy.

"Family problems?"

"You could say so. You can't exactly bring in much by way of Christmas cheer into an ICU." He followed Ray's earlier example and downed his pint quickly. He tapped on the rim of the empty glass. "Nelson, we'll have another."

"It's a good thing I've come to your rescue. Go on and open it, it won't bite you, I promise." She nudged the box towards Sam, refusing to let him get out of this.

"Okay," he said, and found he was more eager to open it than he'd originally expressed to her. He slowly opened the lid, drawing the moment of discovery out. An equally slow smile crept over his features, to end in a genuine, appreciative grin. She'd given him a watch, a heavy silver creation with an expandable metal band.

"It's a Timex," Annie said, proudly. "It takes a licking and keeps on ticking. It reminded me of you."

He slipped the watch on, where it was bulky and heavy on his wrist. "I love it, Annie. Thank you. This was so thoughtful."

"I know," she said, and winked playfully at him. Sam's eyes met her soft blue assurance, and he wanted to remain there, to simply stay in this precious moment where Annie kept him focused on her. He took in the delicate curve of her hair, the gentle soft glow of her skin, and wondered just how forward would it be if he reached out to her and dared to brush her cheek with the back of his hand.

The phone sitting on the edge of the bar began to ring. Sam eyed it cautiously, noting that Nelson ignored its incessant droning, the phone mocking all sense of happiness that Sam had dared to express. He bit down on his bottom lip and broke off Annie's gaze with reluctance. Steeling himself for the worst, he picked up the phone and waited for the newest taunt from Hyde.

"Sam Tyler," he said.

"Boss?"

Chris's voice was a balm on Sam's nerves. He let out a shaky breath, not realizing he'd been holding it.

"You've got to get everyone down here," Chris said, his voice in a broken panic, all sense of relief he'd brought with him eradicated. "I mean it, Boss. There's blood everywhere, it's a right horror show."

/

Apartment 4-24B was shrouded in a near eerie silence, the usual wailing of the infant down the hall now muffled by the quiet a police presence on the building had on the place. Chris was leaning against the corridor wall, his hands on his hips and deep breaths heaving through his thin chest as though he had difficulty keeping his lungs working. An asthma attack, perhaps, Sam thought. One induced by stress.

Standing beside Chris was Ray, his own face serious and pale, the smell of sick not far from where he was standing. The pristine new orange carpet had already claimed its first stain. Ray had his hand on Chris's shoulder, both holding Chris and himself up for support.

"I couldn't do a proper forensic sweep," Chris said to Sam, apologetic. "Never seen nothing like that before. It was all I could do to use the phone."

From the amount of police hovering at the entrance to the flat it was clear that Chris's peers were having similar difficulties. Sam pushed his way past them and entered the front entrance of the flat, getting a good view of the carnage waiting for him on Marjorie Williams' battered green chesterfield.

"I couldn't stop thinking about it," Chris continued. "The way she was so callous over the dog. I figured I'd come back and give her a charge for letting her animal roam at large, maybe set up some fines for animal neglect too while I was at it. The door wasn't locked when I popped round...I opened it and got a right eyeful."

Chris's confession sent a wave of sympathy through the squad that had arrived on the scene, and not even the loud entrance of their DCI Gene Hunt could dissipate the sombre mood that had entrenched the place. Gene Hunt slapped his leather clad hands together and rubbed them, his cheeks ruddy from the chill he had earned outside, his demeanor cheerful.

"Look alive, lads. So, what's on the plate tonight, Chris? Somebody flush away a goldfish?" He approached the flat and took a quick look over Sam's shoulder.

"Jesus," he said, recoiling.

"Did you get any information on our victim before you gave her a visit?" Sam asked Chris. "I want to know who she hung out with, if she had any current boyfriends."

"She was a tart, a freelance prozzie, you know, no pimp. Her file was fat with prostitution charges, and her latest known punter was some bloke named Roger Elkie. He owns a television and radio shop down the road. Bit of a bad sort, he's just finished doing ten for armed robbery and assault."

"Small world," Sam observed, and gave Gene a knowing look.

"He's got animal cruelty charges, which is what got me interested most. Mangled his neighbour's pigeons."

Chris' pallor was alarming, his voice shaking as he spoke. Sam took pity on him, and he put a reassuring hand on the man's shoulder. "You did a good job, Chris. Annie's downstairs, why don't you let her run you home. We can check out your lead."

Gene snorted at this. "Never mind Roger, he's got an airtight alibi. I've spent the better part of this night playing construction foreman while he put in some glorious new oak cabinets in my Mum's kitchen. Which reminds me, Sam, she gives her regards and insisted I bring along some of her freshly made biscuits for you. Pity I got hungry along the way here." Gene pursed his lips as he took in the gory sight waiting for him on the green chesterfield in front of him. "Granted, I'm currently regretting my appetite."

"There was no chance he could have slipped out, then?" Sam asked, leaving Chris and Ray to commiserate their horror and allow Annie to drive them both home. "The animal cruelty charge..."

"Was bullocks. His old lady was making pigeon pie and she used the neighbour's prize show birds for it and they was naturally pissed about it. Delicious, actually. Nobody can make a pigeon pie like Roger's mum."

Gene sighed and walked further into the flat, his arms crossed, his face pursed in an expression of both disgust and thoughtfulness. "Are you honestly telling me that mess was once a human being?"

Sam surveyed the scene, taking in the splatter patterns on the walls and ceiling of the living room and the pools of blood that had coursed from beneath the chesterfield and became burgundy rivers across the uneven tiled floor. He took a pen out of his side pocket and lifted up a blood soaked scrap of fabric from the pulpy mess that lay smeared across the couch. Though the original colour couldn't be properly discerned, the tightly packed pattern of small flowers positively identified the victim.

"Marjorie Williams was wearing this shirt when we visited her this afternoon." The sour scent of newly rotting blood nearly made him gag. It wasn't something he ever wanted to get used to. The flat was engorged with her blood, bits and pieces of her flesh and tissue were stuck on the ceiling, the small television on the floor gory with dried bits of grey matter and only just drying rivulets of blood seeping down the left side.

"She was struck repeatedly..."

"No shit, Sherlock." Gene frowned, his stolen snack of biscuits clearly not sitting well with him. "Damn. She's such a mess I can't tell if she was sitting up or sleeping this way or that way. Her head's all over the damned place."

A cold realization hit Sam, and he felt bile rising from his own gut, threatening to expose his sudden sense of fear. "Her children, where are they, the two boys?"

"Weren't no children here, sir," a uniformed policeman at the door told him.

Sam gave Gene a silent nod and then made his way cautiously down the main hallway of the flat, towards the door that presumably held the boy's bedroom. He inched his way slowly towards it, keeping his steps as silent as possible. If the killer was still in the room...

He paused at the doorway, his gun cocked. Gene was only inches behind him, and then slid to other side of the door, ready to bombard their prey with the barrels of two guns pointed at his head.

"One," Sam mouthed.

"Three," Gene loudly proclaimed, and he bashed open the door with his foot, hinges popping off and sending screws flying out of the cheap wooden frame.

Sam felt an instant flood of relief to see the room was empty of people, what belongings the boys had were placed neatly away, the room pristine and clean. Discarded milk crates housed toys for various ages, a Mr. Potato Head doll with an eye missing lay invalid on the top of one, while a James Bond Hot Wheels car with its back trunk missing lay half buried beneath a slew of Lego pieces. There was little else in the room, save for the large bunk beds that were against the far wall, two completely different personalities clearly residing within the divided space. The bottom bunk was draped with a thin, pale blue flannel blanket, the wall just above the mattress adorned with various childish drawings of a dog running through a set of country hills, a huge smiling sun looking down in approval. The upper bunk was unmade, the bedspread in actuality an old sleeping bag within which was hidden a copy of The Hobbit, opened packets of gum and an eight track cassette of The Bay City Rollers. He pushed the sleeping bag aside and found further junk hidden within the folds. A collection of dried up magic markers and a wooden ball met Sam's scrutiny. He picked up the last object, puzzling over its weight in his hand, his thumb teasing its way across the ridged grooves and dents on its surface.

"It's got a red stripe," Sam observed.

"What, you've never seen a cricket ball before?" Gene said.

He felt weak. Faint. "If you sift through the muck of what's left of Marjorie Williams, I guarantee you'll find wooden splinters from a cricket bat. That's what he used on the dog, and it's what he's used on his mother."

"Who? Not the kid—Give over, Sam, no tyke's strong enough to deliver blows like that."

Obscene though it was, Sam knew Gene was wrong in his assumption. Anger did a lot to human beings, especially the kind of rage welling within the child known to him as James. It didn't pound down doors or belittle people with words, this kind of rage shut down all other emotions, it welled up inside the body like a crackling set of explosives just waiting for its chance to have an excuse to be lit.

"I know where they are," Sam said.

/

The confines of the theater were especially suffocating in the pitch dark, all safety lights off and all that remained was the black hollow that infinity held within it. Sam's flashlight glowed across the rows of the chairs, lining them up in his sight like dark, rounded sentries. The quiet in the theater was a palpable entity, and Sam could feel his heart quicken with every step he took and every flash of his light against the rows of seats.

The main door squealed open, and Sam trained his flashlight on the two figures that had wandered through it. He held his breath as he took in the figure of a small boy with a mop of black hair, and the taller, older child he knew to be his brother James. A flash of something yellow caught Sam's eye and he shone his light on it. The cricket bat dangled in the boy's hand, its surface cracked and splintered from the various blows it had inflicted on its victims. The red stripe had all but disappeared beneath the thick layer of blood staining the wooden surface.

"Shh," Sam heard beside him.

He shone his light on the set of seats to his right, and struggled to keep it within his grip.

Two, three, no it was four. Five. Seven. Nine.

An entire row, a set of twenty or more. Behind them were an army of black haired boys with wide, frightened eyes, their lips half open in recognition.

There were a hundred. A thousand.

Shhhh...

Sam looked about him in a wild panic, his heart hammering in his chest in a staccato beat. He fought his way through the crowd of black haired boys, trying to find the one spot he was meant to be in. All around him, the horrific sounds of bones breaking, the spatter of thousands of pints of blood hitting him in the face, where he could taste its iron flavour on his tongue.

"Stoppit!" Sam shouted out at the milieu of death that had surrounded him. "STOP!"

A single chair was open, empty. Sam stared at it a long moment, not fully realizing the potential it possessed.

A hiss of wind met his ear, and instinctively he reacted. His hand grasped a thin, polished object, and he pushed against the furious force of weight that threatened to bear down on him.

"Sam!"

Gene Hunt's voice in the theater made the multitudes disappear into their soupy, thick darkness, leaving Sam alone with the boy known as James, the cricket bat held at bay, Sam's will against the force of an emotionless killing machine contained in the body of a gangly eleven year old.

"Dammit boy, what do you think you're on about!" Gene shouted. He wrenched the cricket bat from the boy's hand, a sense of horror creeping over him as he got a good look at the stains that had seeped deep into the wood. "What's all this? Why do you have this, boy? Do you know what's happened to your mother?"

The small child Sam knew had to be Georgie looked up at Gene, his dark eyes glassy with shock. He held a small finger to his lips, an urgent plea against the encroaching dark.

"Shhh," he said. "Mommy's sleeping."

"Dammit to hell," Gene said through his teeth.

Sam grabbed James by the throat and hurled him against the theater seats, his fists ready to pack a few blows on his childish face. "You son of a bitch!" he shouted at him. "How could you do such a thing? Your own mother and then your brother, too. You're a monster! A bloody monster!"

"Cool off, Sam, he's just a damned kid! He couldn't wipe snot from his nose without help, there's no way he did it..."

James gave Gene an emotionless shrug. He slumped into one of the seats near where Gene was standing, and picked at the stains beneath his fingernails.

"I like the way it sounds," he said, to no one in particular.

Sam felt sick. He could just puke. Gene stood beside James, a frown etched close on his forehead. "The way what sounds, boy?" he asked.

"The bones," James said, flat, emotionless. Cold as death. "When they break."

His usually deadened eyes flickered with sudden, unexpected emotion, one which others might mistake for pleasure. He made breaking motions with his hands and Gene Hunt visibly flinched against every sound effect.

"Crack! Crr. Crr. Crack!"


	8. Chapter 8

FLICKS—chapter eight

The apartment complex was awash with reporters, the morning light doing little to alleviate the black mood that had overtaken DCI Hunt and his crew. Sam watched as James Williams was taken away, his expression nonplussed and casual, as though he were simply going for a drive in the country and not for a stint for life in prison.

"Is this the future, then," Gene said to Sam. "You're always going on about the future of policing, but you seem to forget to mention how the criminals are catching up. So it's come to this—little kiddies getting into the game of murder, thinking it's as fun as a turn at cricket. Explain it to me, Sam, how something like this can happen. Tell me this will be the only time I'll have to deal with this kind of thing."

Sam remained silent.

"I'm telling you this, and only you—When that kid...When he talked about breaking bones like it was the best thing he'd ever done, the best drug ever took, the best experience of his rotten little existence...The only flicker of life in his eyes was when he was talking of what filth he'd done...God, Sam. I'd never been so scared."

Ray had come back and was currently doing crowd control on the mob of reporters who had descended on the scene, an unwelcome mixture of Festival Of Light protesters and doomsayers joining in.

"Is it true that the boy has said that seeing The Exorcist was the cause for him committing these crimes?" one reporter shouted out to Ray.

"I'd say it was an influence enough," Ray said. Dozens of pencils and pens scratched paper, and Sam rolled his eyes.

"He'd never even seen the movie," Sam shouted to them, but no one took this actual fact down.

Gene slunk into the driver's seat of the Cortina, Sam following suit into the passenger's side. "Tell you what, I'll buy you a round or two at The Railway Arms," Sam said. "I think we've all earned it."

"I'll keep that in mind, but right about now I'm searching for something a bit more special." He pulled the car out of park and squealed the tires as he made their getaway from the theater "First things first—Have to check on my mum and ensure Roger did his job properly. Then we're both going to have a nice sit down and chat with my mum while we sip her specialty hot toddy because I'll be damned if I don't find at least something worth living for this morning."

/

The first thing Sam noticed was that instead of a view of three doors in a dark, ominous hallway, there was now a fresh, delightfully airy kitchen, with a side door that led out to the mud room and the backyard. An opening at the side of the front hall revealed a cluttered living room with all manner of books and odd antique furnishings, along with a very large, but not too large, wooden floor model colour television. Sam smiled and felt a strange sense of ease in these surroundings. This arrangement made far more sense.

"How are you feeling, Sam?" Dierdre Hunt asked him brightly.

Sam gave her a genuine smile in return. "Much better, thanks. I think everything is the way it should be."

"Mostly everything," Dierdre added, her smile only slightly wavering. "Gene, will you stop picking at that cabinet bolt. Yes, it's loose, but just a quick fix with the screwdriver will take care of it, it's not the end of the world."

"It's going to be the end of Roger's," Gene fumed. His hot toddy was now a tepid toddy since he'd spent the better part of the morning inspecting Roger's still shoddy handiwork. Dierdre Hunt sighed in resignation.

"Sam, be a dear and get that screwdriver that was left here on the top of the telly. Gene's not going to be human again until he gets that fixed."

Sam sadly abandoned his hot toddy to pad in his stockinged feet to Mrs. Hunt's living room, to perform the impossible task of searching out a misplaced screwdriver in a room where a haystack could get lost let alone a needle. Luckily, it was where Dierdre had said it would be, and he reached for it, only to be distracted by a section of newspaper that had been dated about a week ago, a large print ad for The Exorcist taking up most of the revealed space. 'Something almost beyond comprehension is happening to a little girl...' the ad read. '...on this street...in this house...and this man has been sent for as a last resort. This man is The Exorcist'.

Sam could almost laugh at the corny attempt to scare. He glanced over the ad with a mixture of nostalgia and amusement. In bold letters, the release date of the dreaded movie bid the frightened to come and be terrified on December 26th.

Sam paused, his thoughts rethinking the date. December 26th. The day after Christmas day. Twenty-six slash twelve slash seventy-three. Twenty-six twelve.

Hyde—2612.

The phone in Dierdre Hunt's living room began to ring. Sam's mouth was dry, a sense of real fear creeping into his bones. He hesitated over the phone, and then slowly picked up the receiver. He didn't bother identifying who he was—He knew the person on the other end would already have that knowledge.

"Congratulations, Sam." the familiar voice from beyond told him. "You've avoided a rather serious catastrophe."

"You tell me what the hell is going on," Sam demanded.

"Dierdre Hunt, however, is still a problem. I have told you before that it is imperative that you do not reveal your real reasons for being there, but Mrs. Hunt has proven herself to be an especially astute person. You do remember, Sam, what happens to those who know too much..."

"You leave her alone," Sam warned.

"On the contrary," the voice from Hyde said. "That order is for you."

/

Dierdre Hunt topped off Sam's hot toddy with a bit more hot water, and shook her head at her eldest son's attempt to redesign her kitchen. Ah well, it was no bother, at least everything was mostly where she could find it again.

Sam was certainly taking a long time finding that screwdriver. Dierdre Hunt balanced the cup of hot brew in her hands and walked out of her kitchen and into her front hall where she searched for Sam. The screwdriver was still where it had been left, but Sam's shoes were missing. She frowned, and then bit her bottom lip in thought. Of course, she thought sadly. He could never possibly grace her home with his charming presence again.

Sam Tyler was gone.

END


End file.
